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FOOD  AND  FLAVOR 


AQA5TRPNOMIC  GWDE 
TO  HEALTH  AKIDGGQDUVINa 

JIENRyTHNCKL 


C/?e  destiny  of  nations  depends  upon  what  and 
hohr^fhey  edt" 

Brittdt^Savarin. 


Illvjth^t*  <^ 


^rUj  S.CK^^^icn* 


NEWXDRKrTHE  CENTWCTCO 
1913 


y^' 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
The  Century  Co. 


Published^  Aprils  IQ^S 


\vt^G^  ^^-A      ''^*3-»-^ 


TO 

LUTHER  BURBANK 

AND 

HARVEY  W.  WILEY 

THE   TWO  MEN 

WHO    HAVE    DONE    MOST 

TO  MAKE    OUR    DAILY    FOOD 

PALATABLE  AND    HONEST 


297734 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I     UNGASTRONOMIC  AMERICA 3 

Mark  Twain's  Patriotic  Palate — Food  Missionaries 
in  the  Far  West — Are  Women  to  Blame? — The 
Danger  in  our  Food — Why  the  Candy  was  not 
Eaten — Dr.  Wiley's  Poison  Squad — Condiments  versus 
Chemical  Preservatives — Scotched,  not  Killed. 

II     VITAL   IMPORTANCE   OF  FLAVOR 40 

Sensual  indulgence  as  a  duty — Gladstone  and 
Fletcher — The  harm  done  by  soft  Foods — Epicurean 
delights  from  plain  Food — How  flavor  helps  the 
Stomach — An  Amazing  Blunder — A  new  Psychology 
of  Eating. 

III  OUR  DENATURED   FOODS 65 

Foul  Fowl — The  French  way  versus  the  American — 
Why  do  we  Eat  Poultry? — Is  cold  storage  a  Blessing? 
— Spoiling  the  American  Oyster — "Smoked"  ham, 
bacon  and  fish — Flavor  in  Butter — Sweet  Butter  versus 
Salt. 

IV  THE  SCIENCE  OF  SAVORY  COOKING 117 

Desirable  raw  foods — Flavor  as  the  guiding  principle 
— ^The  Philosophy  of  soup-making  and  eating — 
Wherein  lies  the  value  of  vegetables? — Broiling,  roast- 
ing, baking,  frying — Combining  the  flavors  of  meats 
and  vegetables — Savory  food  for  everybody — Meat- 
eating  of  the  future — The  folly  of  vegetarianism — 
When   to   use    condiments    and    sauces — Cook    books. 

V    A   NOBLE   ART 152 

The  social  caste  of  cooks — Royalty  in  the  kitchen — 
Rossini,  Car&me  and  Paderewski — Looking  down  on 
others — Does  cooking  Pay? 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

VI    THE    FUTURE   OF   COOKING 171 

School  girls  like  it — Boys  and  soldiers  as  cooks — Trav- 
eling cooking  schools — English  school  dinners — Prog- 
ress in  America — Teaching  the  art  of  eating — Real 
epicurism  is  economical — Fireless  cookers — Private 
versus  community  kitchens — Scientific  electric  cook- 
ing— Importance  of  variety  in  foods. 

VII    FRENCH    SUPREMACY 210 

Kitchen  alchemy — Seven  hundred  soups — Savory 
sauces — Profitable  poules  de  Brese — Digestive  value 
of  sour  salads — Escarole,  tomatoes,  artichokes,  alli- 
gator pears — Vegetables  as  a  separate  course — Paris 
restaurants — Russian  and  American  influences — Pro- 
vincial local  flavors — The  world's  greatest  market 
places — Model  market  gardens — Mushrooms  and 
truffles — Training  trees  for  fancy  fruits — Bread  crust 
versus  crumb — How  the  best  butter  is  made — Cheese  as 
an  appetizer. 

VIII    EPICUREAN    ITALY 309 

The  cradle  of  modern  cookery — Olive  oil  and  Sar- 
dines— Fried  fish  and  fritta  mista — Macaroni,  the  real 
staff  of  life — Cooked  cheese  in  place  of  meat — Birds, 
tomato  paste  and  garlic. 

IX    GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     ....  339 

A  cosmopolitan  cuisine — Delicatessen  stores — Sausages 
and  smoked  ham — Live  fish  brought  to  the  kitchen — 
Game  and  Geese — In  a  Berlin  market — Vienna  bread 
and  Hungarian  flour — German  menus  on  sea  and 
land — German,  Swiss  and  Dutch  cheeses. 

X    BRITISH    SPECIALTIES 394 

Thackeray's  little  sermon — Dr.  Johnson  and  Samuel 
Pepys — The  Roast  beef  of  old  England — Southdown 
mutton — Wiltshire  bacon — Fair  play  for  pigs — 
Grouse  and  grilled  sole — Covent  Garden  market  scenes 
— Marmalades,  jams  and  breakfasts — Restaurants, 
cakes,  and  plum  pudding. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XI    GASTRONOMIC!  AMERICA^ 45^ 

Sweet  corn  and  corn  bread — Griddle  cakes  and  maple 
syrup — Apple  pie  and  cranberries — ^Turkeys,  guinea 
fowl  and  game — Lobsters,  scallops,  crabs,  and  fishes — 
Vegetables  steadily  gaining  ground — ^The  fruit-eaters* 
paradise  Governmental  gastronomy — Burbank's  new 
fruits  and  vegetables. 

XII    COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR 522 

Palatability  decides  permanence — Eating  with  the 
eyes — School  girls  as  pure  food  experts — Pennywise 
dealers  and  pineapples — Successful  peach-growers — 
Fortunes  from  bananas  and  oranges — Melons,  honey 
and  flavoring  extracts — Opportunities  for  women — 
Feeding  flavor  into  food — Farmers,  middlemen,  and 
parcel  post. 

XIII     GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS 559 

Sweet,  sour,  salt  and  bitter — A  comedy  of  errors — How 
flavor  differs  from  fragrance — Important  functions  of 
the  nose — Educating  the  sense  of  smell — Coffee,  tea 
and  temperance. 

INDEX 583 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 
Fred  Harvey 6 

A   Matter  for  the  Health  Department 20 

Harvey   W.   Wiley 26 

The    Old-fashioned    Way 29 

Horace  Fletcher 46 

A    French    Chef's    Culinary    Alchemy 54 

An    American    Quick-Lunch 57 

How   they   do  it   in    France 75 

Where   Smoked  Hams  were  Suspended  from  the  Rafters    ...     98 

Before  Breakfast  in  the  Garden 119 

Chafing  Dish  Cooking 149 

A  fifteenth-century  Kitchen   in   France 162 

Cooking  Class  at  the  Wadleigh  High  School 172 

Fireless   Cooking   in    Hawaii .   193 

The  Tour  d'Argent  and   Frederic  Delair 217 

Caretne 2i8 

Boeuf  a   la   Mode 246 

Coming  to  Market,  Brittany 263 

The    World's    Greatest    Market    Place 268 

Paris    Market    Porters 271 

Halles    Centrales 273 

A  bit  of  the  great  Paris  market 276 

Macaroni  Drying ....   322 

Deer  in  German  Forest 369 

Menus  on  a  German  Steamer 382-384 

The   Boar       ...  420 

"Ye  Olde  Cheshire  Cheese" 446 

London    Bill    of    Fare 448-449 

The    Sugar    Bush 465 

Brillat-Savarin 474 

New  York  down  town  Lunch  Menu 484-485 

Luther    Burbank 510 

Burbank's  Spineless  Cactus 518 

Chinese  Canal      ....  556 

Javanese  Tea-Picker  and  Porter 578 


PREFACE:  A  BOOK  FOR  EVERYBODY 

IT  is  not  often  that  an  author  is  so  fortunate  as  to 
have  a  subject  which  is  of  vital  importance  to 
everybody,  without  exception.  Everybody  eats,  and 
everybody  wants  to  enjoy  his  meals;  yet  few  know  how 
to  get  the  most  benefit  and  pleasure  out  of  them.  The 
French  are  far  ahead  of  us  in  this  respect;  they  are  a 
nation  of  gastronomers,  understanding  fully  the  impor- 
tance to  health  and  happiness  of  raising  only  the  best 
foodstuffs,  cooking  them  in  savory  ways  and  eating 
them  with  intelligence  and  pleasure.  One  of  the  main 
objects  of  the  present  volume  is  to  show  that  we  have 
the  material  for  the  making  of  an  even  more  gastro- 
nomic nation  than  the  French  are,  and  that  Americans, 
especially  if  caught  young,  can  be  taught  to  eat  in  a 
leisurely  way  and  to  refuse  to  accept  anything  that 
lacks  appetizing  flavor. 

Flavor  I  In  that  word  lies  the  key  to  the  whole 
food  problem.  Undoubtedly  the  nourishing  property 
of  food  is  also  of  importance;  without  it  we  could  not 
live.  Yet,  as  Luther  Burbank  has  keenly  remarked,  if 
we  eliminate  palatability  (that  is,  flavor)  from  food, 
it  is  no  more  than  a  medicine,  "to  be  taken  because  it 
produces  certain  necessary  results."     Moreover,  a  little 

xiii 


PREFACE 

of  this  medicine  goes  a  great  way.  Horace  Fletcher 
lived  for  years  on  eleven  cents  a  day;  and  two  univer- 
sity professors — Dr.  J.  L.  Henderson  of  Harvard  and 
Dr.  Graham  Lusk  of  Cornell — have  demonstrated,  in- 
dependently, that  a  dime  a  day,  intelligently  expended, 
is  enough  to  keep  body  and  soul  together.  What  more 
we  spend  on  food — and  we  probably  average  five  times 
that  amount — goes  chiefly  for  flavor.  It  is  the  flavor 
that  makes  us  willing  to  pay  more  for  good  butter  than 
for  good  oleomargarine,  for  fresh  chicken  than  for  cold 
storage  fowl,  for  Virginia  ham  than  for  ordinary  ham, 
and  so  on  throughout  the  list  of  foods ;  for  there  is  no 
difference  in  nutritive  value  in  any  of  these  cases. 

This  being  so,  it  seems  passing  strange  that  while  so 
many  good  books  have  been  written  on  the  nutritive 
aspects  of  foods,  mine  is  the  first  volume  in  any  lan- 
guage treating  specially  of  this  same  flavor,  on  which 
we  spend  so  much  of  our  income,  and  which  is  so  im- 
portant to  our  health.  The  explanation  lies  in  the 
fact  that  flavor  is  generally  looked  upon  as  something 
merely  agreeable — like  the  fragrance  of  strawberries, 
or  the  vanilla  extract  we  put  into  ice  cream — but  of  no 
vital  importance.  It  was  this  misunderstanding  that 
prevented  me  from  keeping  the  title  "Flavor  in  Food" 
which  I  had  intended  to  use.  At  a  conference  with  the 
publishers  we  decided  that  (since,  after  all,  the  book 
also  discusses  many  other  aspects  of  the  food  question), 
it  would  be  wiser  to  use  the  title  "Food  and  Flavor." 

xiv 


PREFACE 

Nevertheless,  Flavor  (with  a  big  "F"  to  emphasize  its 
importance)  is  the  principal  theme,  and  the  most  im- 
portant chapters  are  the  second  and  the  last  in  which 
I  discuss  its  superlative  value,  not  only  as  the  source  of 
countless  wholesome  pleasures  of  the  table,  but  as  a 
guide  to  health.  The  gist  of  the  book  lies  in  the  sec- 
tions "An  Amazing  Blunder"  and  "A  New  Psychology 
of  Eating,"  in  which  I  have  shown  that  we  need  flavor 
as  much  as  we  need  food  if  we  wish  to  be  well;  for 
food  without  flavor  is  not  appetizing;  and  when  food 
is  not  appetizing  it  lies  in  the  stomach  like  lead  and 
causes  dyspepsia,  the  national  American  plague.  The 
final  chapter  considers  the  important  difference  between 
appetizing  flavor  and  mere  fragrance,  the  neglect  of 
which  has  created  no  end  of  confusion  and  done  so 
much  harm. 

In  the  pages  concerned  with  "Ungastronomic  Amer- 
ica" and  "Our  Denatured  Foods,"  I  have  dwelt  on 
some  of  the  evils  which  have  resulted  from  the  giving 
up  of  the  old-fashioned  condiments  (especially  wood- 
smoke)  in  favor  of  the  much  cheaper  chemical  pre- 
servatives which  denature  our  food,  that  is,  destroy  its 
appetizing  flavor,  and  give  rise  to  countless  adultera- 
tions and  deceptions.  It  was  not  with  any  "muck- 
raking" intentions  that  these  pages  were  written,  but 
merely  to  increase  the  present  wholesome  discontent 
and  pave  the  way  for  better  things  by  making  it  clear 
to  all  what  those  better  things  are,  and  indicating  ways 


XV 


PREFACE 

of  thwarting  the  unscrupulous  adulterators  and  deal- 
ers. There  is  need  of  a  good  deal  of  hard  fighting,  for 
there  are  in  many  towns  health  officers  who  thrive  on 
"graft"  as  well  as  wealthy  manufacturers  of  undesira- 
ble preservatives  who  prevent  the  passage  or  enforce- 
ment of  pure  food  laws;  yet  I  believe  the  time  is  not 
very  far  distant  when  these  two  chapters  will  have 
little  more  than  a  historic  interest.  Pending  that 
time,  caveat  emptor — let  the  buyer  beware. 

The  rest  of  the  book  is  mainly  constructive,  and 
under  the  head  of  "Gastronomic  America"  I  have  tried 
to  paint  a  glowing  picture  not  only  of  present  pleas- 
ures of  the  palate  but  of  keener  ones  to  come,  thanks 
to  Luther  Burbank  and  other  educators  of  fruits  and 
vegetables.  Among  these  educators  are  the  specialists 
of  the  Department  of  Agriculture.  The  Government 
of  the  United  States  has  done  more  than  that  of  any 
other  country  to  give  useful  advice  to  the  growers  of 
food  products — and  to  cooks,  too!  Throughout  this 
volume  I  have  missed  no  chance  to  call  attention  to  its 
many  helpful  publications,  besides  summing  up  the 
matter  under  the  head  of  "Governmental  Gastron- 
omy." It  is  a  topic  of  tremendous  importance  to 
farmers,  vegetable  gardeners,  dairymen,  and  all  who 
are  concerned  with  the  growing  or  distributing  of  food 
stuffs.  Farming  is  defined  as  "cultivating  the  ground 
in  order  to  raise  food" ;  and  why  farmers,  quite  as  much 
as  epicures,  should  be  interested  in  the  best  foods^  I 

3cvi 


PREFACE 

have  explained  in  the  section  headed  "Commercial 
Value  of  Flavor,"  with  illustrations  showing  how  a 
tiller  of  the  soil  can  double  or  quintuple  his  income  or 
even  make  a  big  fortune  by  taking  the  demand  for 
appetizing  flavor  as  a  guide. 

Knowing  that  they  do  many  of  these  things  much 
better  in  Europe,  I  made  a  special  gastronomic  trip  in 
1912  to  gather  first  hand  information  in  the  market 
places,  gardens  and  restaurants  of  France,  Italy,  Ger- 
many and  England.  I  have  dwelt  on  the  good  things 
raised  and  prepared  in  those  countries,  such  as  the 
salads,  the  poultry,  the  bread,  the  butter,  the  cheeses, 
the  wonderful  cuisine  of  France;  the  olive  oil,  the 
economical  substitutes  for  meat,  and  the  macaroni  (the 
real  staff  of  life)  of  Italy;  the  diverse  delicatessen  of 
Germany  (including  live  fish  brought  to  the  kitchen 
and  genuinely  smoked  meats  and  fish) ;  the  Wiltshire 
bacon,  the  Southdown  mutton,  the  cakes  and  marma- 
lades of  Great  Britain.  Information  on  many  things 
like  those,  concerning  which  there  is  a  widespread  curi- 
osity, has  not  before  been  brought  conveniently  be- 
tween two  covers,  and  T  am  sure  I  need  not  apologize 
for  having  followed  the  example  of  the  gossiping 
Brillat-Savarin,  in  presenting  this  information  largely 
in  the  form  of  a  narrative  of  personal  experiences,  and 
with  pertinent  anecdotes. 

To  the  chapters  on  the  "Science  of  Savory  Cook- 
ing" and  "A  Noble  Art"  I  wish  to  call  special  atten- 


PREFACE 

tion  because  in  them  lies,  I  am  convinced,  the  ultimate 
solution  of  the  urgent  problem  of  domestic  help,  as 
well  as  the  problem  of  improving  the  average  Ameri- 
can cuisine,  which  is  a  still  larger  one,  because  in  eleven 
out  of  every  twelve  families  the  women  have  to  do 
their  own  cooking.  Too  many  women,  not  to  speak 
of  men,  do  not  know  that  cooking  really  is  a  science, 
(which  electricity  will  soon  make  an  exact  science), 
and  the  practice  of  it  a  fine  art,  experts  in  which  may 
well  look  down  proudly  on  the  mere  factory  and  shop 
girls  who  foolishly  think  they  are  above  them. 
Schools,  women's  societies,  and  society  women  have 
taken  up  the  matter  in  England  as  well  as  in  America, 
and  great  changes  are  impending — changes  which,  it  is 
hoped,  this  volume,  coming  at  the  "psychological  mo- 
ment," will  help  to  accelerate. 


atviii 


FOOD  AND  FLAVOR 


FOOD  AND  FLAVOR 


UNGASTRONOMIC  AMERICA 

MARK  TWAIN's    PATRIOTIC    PALATE 

ARK  TWAIN  swore  by  American  food 
as  he  did  by  the  American  flag. 
When  he  got  as  far  as  Italy,  on  the 
trip  which  resulted  in  "A  Tramp 
Abroad,"  he  became  discouraged,  wrote 
a  homesick  panegyric  on  the  good  things 
he  could  not  get  in  Europe,  and  made  a  list 
of  viands  to  be  ordered  by  the  steamer  preced- 
ing his,  to  await  him  on  his  return.  Among  these 
dishes  were  fried  chicken  Southern  style,  Saratoga 
potatoes,  baked  apples  and  cream,  hot  biscuits,  buck- 
wheat cakes  with  maple  syrup,  toast,  oysters  in 
various  styles,  softshell  crabs,  terrapin  soup,  wild  tur- 

3 


t.-.> 


4  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

key,  cranberry  sauce,  canvasback  duck,  prairie  hens, 
bacon  and  greens,  catsup,  green  corn,  hot  corn-pone, 
stewed  tomatoes  and  pumpkin  pie.  As  he  lived  for 
years  thereafter,  it  is  not  likely  that  he  carried  out  his 
program. 

These  gastronomic  specialties  certainly  are  not  to  be 
sneered  at;  European  epicures  envy  us  most  of  them. 
It  must  be  admitted,  also,  that  American  cookery  has 
made  considerable  progress  in  the  last  decades,  and  that 
there  has  been  an  improvement  in  eating  habits  since 
Dickens,  in  "Martin  Chuzzlewit"  (1843),  described 
the  "violent  bell  ringing";  the  "mad  rush  for  the 
dining-room" ;  the  "great  heaps  of  indigestible  matter" 
which  "melted  away  as  ice  before  the  sun";  the  "dys- 
peptic individuals"  who  "bolted  their  food  in  wedges, 
feeding  not  themselves,  but  broods  of  nightmares." 

Such  scenes  still  occur,  but  they  are  no  longer  typical. 
Nor,  perhaps,  would  Emily  Faithful  have  occasion  to- 
day, as  she  had  in  1884,  to  comment  on  the  "joyless 
American  face,"  due  to  chronic  dyspepsia.  We  are 
still  made  unhappy,  however,  by  the  "indigestible  hot 
bread"  and  "tough  beefsteaks  hardly  warmed  through" 
to  which  she  referred,  and  by  other  gastronomic  atroci- 
ties. 

We  must  not  overlook  the  fine  cooking  done  in  many 
American  private  families,  hotels,  clubs,  and  restau- 
rants, and  we  have  some  good  old  Maryland,  Virginia, 
New  England,  and  San  Franciscan  traditions  to  boast 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     5 

of.  Moreover,  there  are  not  a  few  who  have  rea- 
son to  think  that  the  culinary  low-water  mark  is  to 
be  found  on  English  steamships  and  in  English 
inns.  On  the  whole,  however,  what  Pierre  Blot  wrote 
forty  years  ago  is  still  true:  "American  cookery  is  worse 
than  that  of  any  other  civilized  nation."  Our  great 
national  food  expert  and  reformer.  Dr.  Harvey  W. 
Wiley,  put  the  matter  in  a  nutshell  when  he  said  in  a 
lecture  before  the  General  Federation  of  Women's 
Clubs,  that  "there  is  no  country  in  the  world  where 
food  is  so  plentiful,  and  no  country  in  the  world  where 
it  is  so  badly  cooked,  as  right  here  in  the  United 
States." 

FOOD    MISSIONARIES    IN    THE    FAR    WEST. 

One  need  not  go  to  France  or  Austria  for  a  humiliat- 
ing contrast.  In  one  of  his  books  of  travel  Charles 
Dudley  Warner  declared  that  after  leaving  Phila- 
delphia the  tourist  "will  not  find  one  good  meal  de- 
cently served"  until  he  reaches  Mexico.  In  a  south- 
western railway  restaurant  a  miner  once  said  to  me 
he  had  not  eaten  such  an  abominable  meal  in  all  the 
years  he  had  spent  in  the  wilderness.  To  tell  the  un- 
varnished truth,  he  used  a  stronger  word  than  abomin- 
able. One  of  the  details  I  remember  was  that  the 
tough  steak  had  apparently  been  fried  in  the  drippings 
from  a  tallow  candle. 

In  the  same  part  of  the  country  a  great  change  has 
been  brought   about  by   the   culinary   and   executive 


6  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

genius  of  one  man — Fred  Harvey.  He  came  to  this 
country  from  England — score  one  for  England  I — 
when  he  was  a  boy  of  fourteen,  with  two  pounds  in 
his  pocket.  He  got  a  job  on  a  railway.  There  were 
no  dining  cars  in  those  days  and  although  in  England 
he  had  not  lived  the  life  of  a  gourmet  he  was  amazed 
by  the  wretchedness  of  the  eating  houses  with  their 
canned  meats  and  vegetables,  rancid  bacon,  oilclothed 
tables  without  napkins  and  incompetent  service.  Con- 
vinced that  good  eating-houses  would  advertise  the  rail- 
way and  attract  travel,  he  ventured  to  say  so  to  the 
manager  of  the  Santa  Fe  Railway,  who,  fortunately, 
not  only  approved  the  suggestion  but  gave  him  the 
opportunity  to  show  what  he  could  do.  One  historian 
relates  that  the  manager  "threw  his  arms  around  the 
youthful  promoter  and  wept  with  joy."  He  had  just 
dined  at  a  railway  station ! 

It  was  in  the  year  1876  that  Harvey  opened  his 
first  eating-house  in  Topeka.  It  made  a  sensation. 
Others  soon  were  built  along  the  line  of  the  road  from 
the  Middle  West  to  the  Pacific  Coast  until,  in  1912, 
jthere  were  a  dozen  large  hotels,  sixty-five  railway  res- 
taurants and  sixty  dining-cars  under  the  same  manage- 
ment. 

That  Harvey  was  a  born  epicure  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  when  he  opened  the  Montezuma  Hotel  in 
1882,  he  would  not  allow,  as  the  Kansas  City  "Star" 
tells  us,  any  canned  goods  to  go  on  the  table.     He  sent 


FRED  HARVEY 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     7 

a  man  to  Guaymas  and  Hermosillo  in  Old  Mexico  to 
get  fruit,  green  vegetables,  shell  fish  and  other  kinds  of 
food.  A  contract  was  made  with  the  chief  of  a  tribe 
of  Yaqui  Indians  to  supply  the  hostelry  with  green 
turtles  and  sea  celery.  These  turtles,  which  were  se- 
cured for  $1.50  each,  weighed  two  hundred  pounds  and 
were  full  of  eggs.  Mr.  Harvey  selected  a  little  pool 
near  the  hotel  where  he  fattened  the  turtles.  A  feature 
of  the  bill  of  fare  every  day  was  genuine  green  turtle 
soup  and  turtle  steak.  The  sea  celery  used  is  a  spicy 
weed  which  makes  a  fine  salad. 

Naturally,  such  delicacies  could  not  be  served  at 
the  ordinary  railway  restaurants;  yet  these,  too,  had 
their  pleasant  surprises,  and  were  unspeakably  superior 
to  what  the  travelers  had  been  obliged  to  put  up  with 
in  pre-Harvey  days.  On  ordering  tea,  for  example, 
you  would  get  a  separate  little  Japanese  pot  with  the 
steaming  infusion  freshly  made  for  you.  This  was  as 
far  as  Harvey  could  go  in  these  places  in  carrying  out 
the  perfect  host's  maxim  that  every  diner  should  feel 
as  if  the  meal  he  eats  had  been  specially  prepared  for 
him.  But  there  were  other  details  that  betrayed 
special  intelligence  and  thought.  Thus,  in  stopping 
one  day  for  supper  in  one  of  the  Harvey  restaurants  in 
the  sizzling  Arizona  desert,  I  was  delighted  to  find  the 
table  loaded  down  with  the  sour  things  that  one  craves 
on  hot  days — diverse  vegetable  and  meat  salads. 

One  of  the  amusing  details  in  connection  with  the 


8  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

Harvey  organization  was  that  it  became  known  as  a 
marriage  agency,  because  the  neat  and  well-trained 
waitresses  got  married  one  after  another,  some  of  them 
to  wealthy  ranchmen. 

Of  greater  importance  was  the  fact  that  the  Harvey 
eating-houses  served  as  schools  to  all  the  Southwest, 
bringing  about  a  general  reform.  The  rival  railway 
systems,  naturally,  could  not  persevere  in  their  bar- 
barian ways. 

Fred  Harvey  is  no  more,  but  his  influence  survives 
and  his  name  is  one  to  conjure  with  throughout  the 
Pacific  slope. 

In  the  East,  also,  one  comes  across  a  good  meal  now 
and  then  in  a  dining-car  or  a  railroad  station.  There  is 
one,  says  Edward  Hungerford,  up  in  the  northern  part 
of  New  York  State  that  has  never  yielded  its  suprem- 
acy to  any  circuit-riding  cafe  on  wheels.  When  a  cer- 
tain high  officer  of  the  busy  road  that  spreads  itself 
apart  at  that  junction  goes  up  there,  he  orders  the 
cook  of  his  private  car  to  shut  up  the  kitchen.  "Do 
you  suppose  that  I  would  pass  by  that  town,"  he  says, 
"and  the  best  square  meal  in  the  whole  State?" 

Those  things,  alas,  are  exceptional.  Taken  the 
country  through,  railway  restaurants  and  diners  are  to 
this  day  even  worse  than  the  average  hotels  and  board- 
ing houses.  Flavorless,  unappetizing  meats,  insipid 
vegetables,  doughy  pies  and  soggy  cakes  are  the  rule  at 
our  eating  places  everywhere. 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     9 

The  most  astonishing  thing  about  this  is  that  the 
average  American  enjoys  a  good  meal,  if  he  can  get  it, 
not  a  bit  less  than  the  average  European,  as  I  have 
observed  hundreds  of  times  in  our  own  best  eating 
houses  and  in  foreign  hotels  and  restaurants  during 
ten  trips  to  Europe.  And  that  the  capacity  to  enjoy 
a  civilized  meal  is  inherent  not  only  in  those  who  can 
cross  the  ocean  and  pay  for  Parisian  dainties,  but  in 
the  humblest  tiller  of  the  soil  or  railway  employee, 
was  amusingly  made  manifest  to  me  many  years  ago 
in  the  wild  and  woolly  West.  I  was  brought  up  in  the 
village  of  Aurora,  Oregon,  which  was  inhabited  chiefly 
by  members  of  a  German  colony,  who  differed  in  no- 
wise from  millions  of  poor  but  honest  men  and  women 
in  the  Fatherland.  One  of  the  most  precious  things 
they  had  brought  from  the  old  country  was  the  skill 
to  cook  a  savory  meal — a  meal  that  one  could  enjoy  to 
the  full  without  feeling  the  pangs  of  dyspeptic  remorse 
for  hours  afterwards. 

The  Aurora  hotel  soon  became  far-famed ;  and  when 
the  first  railway  was  built  from  San  Francisco  to  Port- 
land, the  astute  makers  of  the  time-table  somehow 
managed  it  so  that  most  of  the  trains  stopped  at  Aurora, 
though  it  is  but  twenty-eight  miles  from  the  terminal, 
Portland. 

Nor  was  that  all.  The  popularity  of  the  Aurora 
cookery  suggested  the  idea  that  it  might  be  profitable 
to  erect  a  restaurant  tent  in  Salem  during  the  annual 


lo  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

State  Fair.  The  result  was  astonishing.  All  the 
other  eating-places  were  soon  completely  deserted;  the 
Aurora  tent  had  to  be  enlarged,  and  there  was  such  a 
mad  rush  for  seats  at  the  tables  that  in  a  few  days 
nearly  every  man  and  woman  and  boy  and  girl  in  the 
village  had  been  drafted  to  serve  as  cooks  or  waiters. 

It  was  plain  German  bourgeois  cooking;  but  the 
sausages  were  made  of  honest  pork  and  the  hams  had 
the  appetizing  flavor  which  the  old-fashioned  smoke- 
house gives  them;  the  bread  was  soft  yet  baked  thor- 
oughly, the  butter  was  fresh  and  fragrant  and  the  pan- 
cakes melted  in  the  mouth.  As  for  the  supreme  effort 
of  Aurora  cookery — noodle  soup  made  with  the  boiled 
chicken  {not  cold-storage  chicken)  served  in  the  plate 
— the  mere  memory  of  it  makes  my  mouth  water,  four 
decades  after  eating  it. 

In  justice  to  Portland,  which  in  those  days  was  in 
a  benighted  condition  fully  warranting  the  action  of 
the  railway  men  in  making  Aurora  their  culinary  ter- 
minus, let  me  hasten  to  add  that  at  present,  with  its 
Chinook  salmon  and  Columbia  River  smelt,  its  hard- 
shell crabs  and  razor  clams,  its  delicious  Willamette 
crawfish — rivaling  the  best  French  ecrevisses — its 
fragrant  mammoth  strawberries,  its  juicy  cherries,  and 
its  world-famed  Hood  River  apples,  it  is  hardly  second 
to  San  Francisco  as  a  gastronomic  center.  In  Oregon, 
as  in  Washington  and  California,  the  epicure  fares 
particularly  well  because  the  luxuries  of  life  are  as 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     ii 

cheap  as  the  staples  and  quite  as  abundant,  if  not  more 
so. 

ARE    WOMEN    TO    BLAME^ 

Inasmuch  as  an  American  is  quite  as  capable  of  en- 
joying a  good  meal  as  any  one  else,  why  is  it  that  we 
are  so  conspicuously  ungastronomic  as  a  nation^ 

It  is  obvious  that  the  cooks  are  largely  to  blame.  It 
is  so  difficult  to  procure  a  good  cook  that  most  of  us 
give  up  the  search  in  despair  and  resignedly  eat  what 
is  placed  before  us. 

In  Europe  it  is  still  comparatively  easy  to  find  a 
young  woman  or  a  man  who,  by  domestic  training, 
has  learned  to  prepare  a  savory  meal  and  is  willing  to 
take  the  trouble  necessary  to  get  satisfactory  results. 
In  the  United  States  few  of  the  helpers  available  have 
any  domestic  traditions  to  fall  back  on.  As  a  rule, 
they  frankly  admit,  on  applying  for  a  place,  that  they 
know  only  "plain  cooking."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  few 
of  them  can  even  boil  an  egg  or  a  potato  without  spoil- 
ing it.  They  are  not  interested  in  their  work,  as  they 
would  he  if  tliey  were  experts^  and  their  main  object 
is  to  get  as  much  money  as  they  can  for  as  little  work 
as  possible.  To  be  sure,  a  cook's  hours  are  long,  but 
many  of  them  are  spent  in  dawdling. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  most  of  our  hired  cooks  are 
Irish.  There  are  and  have  been  excellent  cooks  of  this 
nation,  but  as  a  rule  the  Irish  are  not  so  interested  in 


12  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

this  art  as  the  French,  Germans,  Italians  and  Swedes, 
and  the  results  are  deplorable,  especially  when,  as  is 
usually  the  case,  the  mistress  is  herself  so  ignorant  that 
she  cannot  tell  the  cook  why  the  food  is  wrong  and 
how  it  could  be  improved. 

The  worst  of  it  is  that  if  the  mistress  of  the  house 
does  know  enough  herself  to  teach  the  new  cook  some 
tricks,  the  latter  is  likely  to  leave  because,  on  account 
of  this  newly  acquired  knowledge,  she  can  get  higher 
wages  elsewhere!  Which  reminds  me  of  what  hap- 
pened to  my  wife's  grandmother.  She  once  had  a  cook 
who  was  absolutely  green,  but  who  wanted  the  highest 
wages.  When  asked  how  she  could  demand  so  much 
when  she  admitted  her  ignorance,  she  retorted: 

"Ah,  Mrs.  Black,  thelarnin'isthesevarestpartof  it." 

It  will  not  do,  however,  to  put  all  the  blame  on  the 
domestic  helpers.  Only  one  family  in  twelve,  even 
in  our  wealthy  country,  can  afford  to  hire  a  cook.  In 
the  other  eleven  families  the  women  of  the  house  are 
personally  responsible  for  the  meals.  Why  are  these 
generally  so  unsatisfactory*? 

Visitors  from  abroad  who  have  asked  themselves 
this  question,  usually  answer  it  by  saying  that  Ameri- 
cans have  idolized  and  spoiled  their  women  and  are 
now  paying  the  penalty. 

"The  European,"  says  one  of  them,  "takes  it  as  a 
matter  of  course  that  the  woman  he  marries  will  be 
his  home-maker  and  housekeeper,  able  and  willing,  if 


UNGASTRONOMIC     AMERICA     13 

necessary,  to  do  the  careful  cooking  on  which  his  health 
and  his  enjoyment  of  life  depend  so  largely.  In 
America  the  main  object  of  the  women  seems  to  be  to 
throw  off  all  the  responsibilities  of  housekeeping  so 
that  they  may  either  gad  about  socially  or  engage  in 
outside  employment.  The  necessary  meals  are  hastily 
cooked,  marketing  is  done  by  telephone,  the  grocer  and 
butcher  are  foolishly  trusted  as  to  the  quality  of  the 
raw  material,  and  the  results  are  such  as  we  see — 
monotonous,  unwholesome,  insipid  meals,  followed  by 
indigestion." 

There  is  no  doubt  some  truth  in  this  foreigner's  ob- 
servations, though  he  takes  no  account  of  the  many 
thousands  of  American  wives  who  work  as  hard  to 
make  their  homes  abodes  of  comfort,  health  and  hap- 
piness as  their  husbands  do  to  supply  the  necessary  cash. 

On  the  American  men  falls  a  large  share  of  the  blame 
for  existing  conditions.  Completely  absorbed  in  their 
private  and  particular  business  they  labored  too  long 
under  the  delusion  that  their  whole  duty  consisted 
in  supplying  the  cash  needed  for  housekeeping. 
Their  indifference  to  the  sources  and  the  quality  of  the 
raw  material  of  the  food  they  ate,  brought  into  exist- 
ence a  horde  of  adulterators  and  poisoners  on  a  scale 
never  before  witnessed  anywhere — and  that  is  another 
important  reason  why  we  are  not  a  gastronomic  nation. 
With  such  sophisticated  material  the  best  cooks  in  the 
world  could  not  prepare  appetizing,  wholesome  meals; 


14  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

and  when  meals  are  not  appetizing,  men  lose  interest 
in  them,  bolting  their  food,  and  passing  on  to  things 
that  seem  more  important  and  agreeable. 

Adulterators  and  spoilers  of  food  have  existed  since 
the  days  of  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans  and  prob- 
ably they  flourished  long  before  them;  but  never  be- 
fore had  the  far-famed  "Yankee  ingenuity"  been 
brought  to  bear  on  the  ignoble  task  of  deceiving  peo- 
ple as  to  what  they  were  eating  and  drinking. 

Of  this  ingenuity  a  striking  illustration  was  given  at 
Washington  when  the  pure  food  agitators,  headed  by 
Dr.  Wiley  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  gave  an 
exhibit  before  Congress.  On  a  table  had  been  placed 
— along  with  other  similarly  fraudulent  articles — a 
bottle  of  "honey."  On  the  surface  of  it  floated  a  bee. 
Now,  the  man  who  put  that  bee  in  the  bottle  had  said 
to  himself:  "Nine  persons  out  of  ten  will,  on  seeing 
it,  conclude  instantly  that  it  got  in  accidentally  and 
that  it  proves  the  honey  to  be  genuine."  But  that 
bottle  never  contained  any  honey;  it  was  filled  with 
a  sticky,  sweet  substance  resembling  honey  in  appear- 
ance, but  instead  of  being  made  up  of  the  products  of 
the  bee's  beneficent  floral  industry,  it  contained  ingredi- 
ents some  of  which  were  injurious  to  health. 

THE    DANGER    IN    OUR    FOOD. 

That  bottle  was  a  sample  of  thousands  of  adulter- 
ated or  entirely  spurious  "foods"  for  which  American 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     15 

men  and  women  had  been  for  a  long  time  spending 
good  money  in  the  belief  that  they  were  getting  what 
they  paid  for. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  ago  the  food  poisoners  and 
adulterators  spread  a  net  of  fraud  across  the  United 
States,  the  like  of  which  the  world  had  never  seen;  and 
for  a  long  time  the  American  public,  with  the  meek- 
ness (up  to  a  certain  point!)  for  which  it  has  become 
notorious,  submitted  to  this  abuse,  eating  the  drugged 
food  and  suffering  the  daily  pangs  of  indigestion,  won- 
dering vaguely  what  was  the  matter — why  Europeans 
found  us  a  nation  of  dyspeptics — and  paying  fortunes 
to  doctors,  and  to  vendors  of  patent  medicines,  without 
being  able  to  avert  the  final  general  breakdown. 

Then  something  occurred  which  made  the  worm 
turn  on  its  tormentors — the  "embalmed  beef"  incident. 

Major-General  Miles,  backed  up  by  other  officers, 
declared  positively  that  most  of  the  canned  beef  sup- 
plied to  our  soldiers  during  the  war  with  Spain  was- 
unfit  for  human  food,  and  that  he  was  convinced  that 
the  refrigerated  beef  supplied  was  highly  deleterious 
because  of  the  introduction  of  chemicals  for  preserva- 
tive purposes.  The  court  which  investigated  these 
charges,  while  admitting  some  of  the  alleged  evils,  in- 
dulged, many  people  thought,  in  whitewashing;  so 
the  public  at  last  made  up  its  mind  that  "something 
was  rotten  in  the  state  of  Denmark." 

Particularly  was  it  impressed  by  the  statement  that 


i6  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

the  food  supplied  to  the  army  was  "not  different  from 
that  generally  sold  to  the  public."  That  admission 
made  people  ask  themselves:  "What,  then,  are  we 
eating'?" 

The  result  was  a  general  awakening  and  investiga- 
tion, a  country-wide  search  which  revealed  the  shock- 
ing fact  that  the  community  was  harboring  thousands 
of  seemingly  respectable  citizens  who  were  piling  up 
fortunes  by  plying  the  deadly  trade  of  modern  Bor- 
gias,  slaughtering  infants  and  invalids  and  making  even 
the  robust  feel  uncomfortable  most  of  the  time. 

The  chemicals  used  were  formalin,  boric  and  salicylic 
acid,  fluo-sylicate  of  ammonium,  aniline  dyes,  and  a 
number  of  secret  compounds  that  were  sold  to  packers 
and  dealers,  enabling  them  to  doctor  spoiled  meats  and 
other  foods  in  such  a  way  as  to  deceive  the  purchaser 
and  consumer  into  thinking  them  fresh  and  whole- 
some. 

To  realize  the  full  extent  of  this  nefarious  traffic  one 
has  to  go  back  to  the  newspaper  reports  of  the  investi- 
gations and  food  tests,  especially  in  the  year  1899, 
after  the  "embalmed  beef"  inquiry.  I  have  before  me 
clippings  that  would  fill  fifty  pages  with  gruesome 
details;  but  a  mere  peep  into  this  culinary  chamber  of 
horrors  must  suffice. 

"  The  use  of  antiseptics  as  preservatives  is  becoming 
alarmingly  great,"  declared  Prof.  A.  S.  Mitchell, 
analytical  chemist  of  the  Wisconsin  Dairy  and  Food 


UNGASTRONOMIC     AMERICA     17 

Commission,  before  the  Senatorial  Committee  on  Pure 
Food  Investigation.  Among  the  preservatives  he 
named  was  a  liquid  called  "freezene,"  which  he  said, 
was  almost  pure  formic-aldehyde,  the  substance  that 
several  chemists  at  the  military  inquiry  had  claimed  to 
have  found  in  the  beef  furnished  the  army.  It  acts 
disastrously  upon  the  tissues  of  the  stomach,  but  was 
often  put  into  the  milk  and  butter  supplied  to  families. 
Butchers  employed  freely,  especially  in  "Hamburger 
steaks,"  sulphite  of  soda,  which  not  merely  arrests  di- 
gestion, but  is,  as  another  Government  expert  remarked, 
practically  the  same  he  had  used  as  a  medical  student 
to  preserve  corpses,  and  later  to  disinfect  houses  where 
smallpox  patients  had  lived. 

The  New  York  "Herald"  of  June  4,  1899,  contained 
a  page  and  a  half  of  exposures,  with  these  headlines: 

POISON  AND  ADULTERATION  FOUND  IN  ALL  FOOD 
PURCHASED  BY  THE  "HERALD."  FORTY  SAMPLES  ANA- 
LYZED AND  NOT  ONE  OF  THEM  WHAT  IT  PURPORTED 
TO  BE.  TEA  THAT  CONTAINED  ALMOST  EVERYTHING 
BUT  TEA  LEAVES.  SOME  FACTS  THAT  EVERY  HOUSE- 
KEEPER SHOULD  KNOW.  THE  CITY  AUTHORITIES  DO 
LITTLE. 

One  of  the  samples  of  what  was  sold  as  "tea"  was 
"composed  of  refuse  of  many  kinds — hair,  mouldy 
leaves  from  everything  that  grows  but  the  tea  plant." 
Another  sample  contained  "dust,  seed-pods,  foreign 
woody  stems,  and  unidentified  refuse." 


i8  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

To  cite  one  more  of  the  two-score  analyses  made  by 
the  "Herald's"  expert  (James  C.  Duff,  consulting  chem- 
ist to  the  New  York  Produce  Exchange)  :  "The  sample 
of  American  macaroni  contains  artificial  yellow  color- 
ing matter,  egg-yolk  color,  composed  of  flour  and  the 
coloring  matter.  This  coloring  matter  has  as  its  base 
chrome  colors — substances  very  poisonous.  The  genu- 
ine Italian  macaroni  contains  nothing  injurious  to 
health." 

"Reports  from  analysts  in  other  cities  show  that  92 
per  cent,  of  the  allspice  examined  is  adulterated,  50 
per  cent,  of  cinnamon,  60  per  cent,  of  ginger,  100  per 
cent,  of  mustard,  and  70  per  cent  of  pepper.  .  .  . 
It  is  a  matter  of  record  that  the  demand  for  the  mate- 
rials for  adulteration  has  called  into  existence  a  branch 
of  manufacturing  industry  having  for  its  sole  object 
the  production  of  articles  known  as  'spice  mixtures' 
or  'pepper  dust.'  They  are  sold  by  the  barrel  as  T.  D. 
ginger,'  T.  D.  pepper,'  or  T.  D.  cloves.'  These  man- 
ufacturers openly  advertise  themselves  as  'assorters 
and  renovators  of  merchandise.     .     .     .' " 

The  New  York  "Tribune"  printed  a  report  of  an  ad- 
dress made  by  a  representative  of  the  Benchmen's  As- 
sociation of  Retail  Butchers  who  said,  regarding  the 
upper  West  Side:  "Decayed  meats  are  chemically 
treated  to  counteract  odor  and  outer  discoloration  and 
are  hawked  on  the  street  corners  on  Saturday  nights. 
The  shoppers  of  that  locality  are  after  something  cheap. 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     19 

and  here  they  get  it.  Resulting  illness  is  ascribed  to  a 
mysterious  Providence  or  anything  rather  than  the 
'nice  tender  broilers,  two  for  a  quarter,'  that  they  had 
for  Sunday's  dinner.  The  police  say  the  matter  is 
one  for  the  Health  Department,  and  the  Health  De- 
partment refers  your  complaints  to  its  inspectors. 
These  are  paid  from  $1,200  to  $1,400  a  year,  and  to 
my  positive  knowledge  not  one  of  them  has  entered 
our  shops  for  the  last  seven  years.  For  all  the  Health 
Department  knows,  we  might  have  been  selling  spoiled 
meat  all  that  time." 

A  Philadelphian  investigator  of  adulterated  food, 
H.  Wharton  Amberling,  wrote:  "There  has  been 
adulteration  for  ages.  It  is  born  of  the  same  parentage 
as  robbery,  perjury,  arson  and  murder.  It  has  grown 
in  enormity  because  the  law  has  not  dealt  with  it  as 
it  has  with  other  crimes.  The  rapid  progress  of  chem- 
istry has  attained  most  grateful  accomplishments,  but 
the  leprous  hand  of  adulteration  is  using  it  to  fill  our 
blood  with  the  poison  of  disease  and  death." 

"It  is  estimated,"  said  the  New  York  "Evening 
Post,"  "that  the  people  of  the  United  States  spend  no 
less  than  five  billion  dollars  a  year  for  food  and  that 
nine-tenths  of  this  money  is  paid  for  articles  of  food 
which  are  more  or  less  adulterated.  All  food  adultera- 
tions are  not  injurious,  though  a  great  majority  of  them, 
probably  nine-tenths,  are  so,  in  greater  or  less  de- 
gree.    .     .     ,     The  art  of  adulterating  food  has  been 


A  matter  for  the  Health  Department 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    21 

carried  to  a  very  fine  point  by  American  ingenuity  and 
has  proved  immensely  profitable  to  those  who  practise 
it,  while  it  has  undoubtedly  worked  great  damage  to 
the  general  health.  .  .  .  It  is  a  wise  man  who 
knows  what  he  is  eating  nowadays." 

A  report  of  the  Connecticut  Agricultural  Experi- 
ment Station  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  eighty- 
nine  samples  of  tea  were  all  found  pure  as  a  result 
of  the  federal  law  of  1897,  which  established  a  board 
of  seven  experts  to  enforce  the  statute  and  forbade  im- 
portation of  the  adulterated  article. 

The  American  products  were  on  the  other  hand  in  a 
woeful  condition.  Sixty- three  samples  of  fruit  jelly 
examined  showed  adulteration  in  two-thirds  of  the 
cases  by  starch,  glucose,  aniline  dyes,  and  salicylic  acid. 
Pure  jellies  cost  25  cents  a  pound  while  these  artificial 
jellies  cost  but  five  cents.  Out  of  40  samples  of 
marmalades  and  jams  only  three  were  pure.  Exam- 
ination of  nineteen  samples  of  sausages  and  oysters 
showed  "embalming"  by  boric  acid. 

WHY    THE    CANDY    WAS    NOT    EATEN. 

Miss  Alice  Lakey,  chairman  of  the  food  investigat- 
ing committee  of  the  Food  Consumers'  League,  made  a 
collection,  as  the  New  York  "Sun"  reported,  of  squares 
of  flannel,  a  dozen  of  them,  in  brilliant  hues  of  green, 
red,  pink,  and  other  colors — all  colored  with  the  coal 
tar  dyes  that  came  out  of  eatables  and  drinkables,  she 


22  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

explained,  adding:  "It's  a  wonder  that  our  insides  are 
not  dyed  all  the  colors  of  the  rainbow. 

"One  of  the  meanest  forms  of  adulteration  I  know," 
she  further,  remarked,  "is  the  blackberry  brandy,  be- 
cause that  is  bought  for  invalids,  aged  and  delicate 
persons,  who  hope  to  get  a  little  strength  and  appetite 
from  it.  Out  of  600  samples  examined,  460  contained 
no  trace  of  blackberries.  They  were  made  of  crude 
spirits  colored  with  coal  tar  dyes. 

"Did  you  ever  hear  the  story,"  she  continued,  "of 
the  kind-hearted  New  York  woman  who  invited  a  com- 
pany of  Italian  girls  who  worked  in  a  candy  factory 
to  a  Christmas  party?  She  had  an  entertainment  and 
Christmas  tree  for  them,  and  among  other  things  was 
a  box  of  fine  chocolate  creams  for  each  one.  When 
they  went  away  every  child  left  her  box  of  candy  on 
the  chair  behind  her. 

"  Why,  aren't  you  going  to  take  your  chocolates?' 
said  the  surprised  hostess. 

"  'Oh,  no,'  they  said  in  chorus;  'we  make  those!'  " 

That  tells  the  whole  story.  The  slaughter  of  the 
innocents  and  the  ruining  of  health  of  children  by 
means  of  adulterated  and  poisoned  candies  was  for 
decades  a  national  crime  that  would  have  justified 
thousands  of  lynchings,  if  anything  ever  does  justify 
such  summary  meting  out  of  punishment. 

Dr.  Shepard,  State  chemist  of  South  Dakota,  framed 
a  series  of  menus,  on  the  plan  of  those  published  by  the 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    23 

women's  magazines,  to  assist  housewives  in  catering  for 
families.  Here  are  three,  which  show  how  any  family 
in  the  United  States  might  have  reasonably  taken  forty 
doses  of  chemical  preservatives  and  coal  tar  dyes  in 
one  day: 

BREAKFAST 

Sausages  containing  coal  tar  dye  and  borax 
Baker's  Bread  containing  alum 

Butter  containing  coal  tar  dye 
Canned  Cherries  containing  coal  tar  dye  and  salicylic  acid 
Pancakes  containing  alum 

Syrup  containing  sodium  sulphate 

DINNER 

Tomato  Soup  with  coal  tar  dye  and  benzoic  acid 
Cabbage  and  Corned  Beef  with  saltpeter 

Corn  Scallops  with  sulphurous  acid  and  formaldehyde 
Canned  Peas  with  salicylic  acid 
Catsup  with  coal  tar  dye  and  benzoic  acid 

Vinegar  with  coal  tar  dye 
Mince  Pie  with  boracic  acid 
Pickles  with  copperas,  sodium  sulphate  and  salicylic  acid 
Lemon  Ice  Cream  with  methyl  alcohol 

SUPPER 

Bread  and  Butter  with  alum  and  coal  tar  dye 

Canned  Beef  with  borax 

Canned  Peaches  with  sodium  sulphite,  coal  tar  dye  and  salicylic 

acid 

Pickles  with  copperas,  sodium  sulphate  and  formaldehyde 

Catsup  with  coal  tar  dye  and  benzoic  acid 

Lemon  Cake  with  alum 
Baked  Pork  and  Beans  with  formaldehyde 
Vinegar,  coal  tar  dye 
Currant  Jelly,  coal  tar  dye  and  salicylic  acid 

Cheese,  coal  tar  dye 


24  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

Physicians  sometimes  prescribe  such  chemicals,  when 
they  are  indicated,  in  very  small  doses.  The  Food 
Commissioner  of  North  Dakota,  Dr.  Ladd,  reported  in 
a  bulletin  that  he  found  from  five  to  fifteen  grains  of 
boric  acid  to  every  pound  of  ham,  dried  beef,  etc., 
examined;  while  in  hamburger  steaks,  sausages,  etc., 
the  amount  ranged  from  twenty  to  fifty  grains  a  pound. 
The  maximum  dose  of  boric  acid  prescribed  by  a  physi- 
cian is  said  not  to  exceed  ten  grains  daily. 

DR.  Wiley's  poison  squad. 

Napoleon  Bonaparte  said  that  "soldiers  march  and 
fight  on  their  stomachs."  If  our  soldiers,  fed  on  "em- 
balmed" beef  and  other  chemically  treated  food,  had 
had  much  marching  and  fighting  to  do,  Spain  might 
have  won.  As  it  was,  the  American  soldiers  who  were 
killed  or  invalided  during  that  war,  were  martyrs  to 
a  nobler  cause  than  that  of  humiliating  poor  Spain. 
It  was  their  sufferings  that,  as  already  intimated,  led 
to  the  national  revolt  against  the  wholesale  poisoners 
and  adulterators  for  commercial  profit. 

As  a  matter  of  course,  the  parties  accused  showed 
fight.  One  of  the  earliest  battles  was  fought  over 
borax,  and  it  was  in  this  battle  that  Dr.  Wiley  first 
came  before  the  general  public  prominently.  During 
the  months  from  December,  1902,  to  July  1,  1903,  he 
made  a  series  of  experiments  on  twelve  young  men  in 
Washington  as  to  the  influence  on  the  health  of  food 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    25 

containing  boric   acid   or  borax.     Some  of  the  con- 
clusions reached  were  thus  summed  up  briefly: 

When  boric  acid  or  Its  equivalent  In  borax  Is  taken  In  food 
In  quantities  not  exceeding  a  half  gram  daily,  no  Immediate 
effects  are  observed;  after  a  time  there  occur  occasional  loss  of 
appetite,  a  feeling  of  fullness  In  the  head,  gastric  discomfort,  and 
general  Ill-feeling.  Only  the  more  sensitive  persons  develop 
symptoms  from  the  amounts  named.  When  the  drug  Is  given 
In  larger  and  increasing  doses,  these  symptoms  In  accentuated 
form  develop  more  rapidly;  most  common  is  persistent  headache 
with  slight  clouding  of  the  mental  processes.  The  quantity 
of  boric  acid  required  to  produce  definite  symptoms  varies  greatly 
w^ith  different  Individuals.  In  some,  one  to  two  grams  daily 
produce  decided  distress;  In  others,  three  grams  cause  little  If 
any  discomfort.  Conclusions  regarding  the  use  of  less  than 
half  a  gram  daily  were  not  reached,  but  from  the  effect  of  the 
larger  quantities  taken  for  a  short  time,  It  Is  reasonable  to  Infer 
that  smaller  doses  during  an  extended  period  would  also  prove 
Injurious.  The  results  In  general  Indicate  that  It  Is  not  advis- 
able to  use  borax  In  articles  of  food  Intended  for  common  and 
continuous  use.  When  placed  In  foods  used  only  occasionally 
and  In  small  amounts,  the  quantity  of  the  contained  preservative 
should  be  stated  plainly,  that  the  consumer  may  know  what  he 
Is  eating. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  facts,  and  one  known  to 
few,  in  connection  with  these  experiments,  is  that  Dr. 
Wiley  actually  began  them  with  a  bias  in  favor  of 
borax.  He  did  not  believe,  he  said,  that  borax  was 
a  harmful  preservative,  but  he  was  going  to  find  out. 
This  statement  aroused  my  suspicion.  Knowing  how 
much  "graft"  and  "politics"  there  are  apt  to  be  in  such 


26  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

investigations,  I  made  up  my  mind  that  Dr.  Wiley  was 
a  fraud  and  that  he  would  undoubtedly  give  a  verdict 
in  favor  of  borax.  While  in  this  frame  of  mind  I 
wrote  the  following  editorial  for  the  New  York  "Even- 
ing Post"  (April  8,  1903)  : 

Dr.  Wiley,  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  seems  to  re- 
quire a  long  time  to  decide  whether  his  "brigade  of  poison  eat- 
ers,** as  the  Washington  wits  have  dubbed  his  free  boarders,  are 
really  eating  poison  or  only  harmless  food  preservatives  unjustly 
suspected  of  being  injurious.  It  needed  no  elaborate  experi- 
ments to  prove  that  drugged  food  may  be  eaten  without  serious 
harm.  Many  of  us  are  probably  eating  more  or  less  of  drugged 
food  all  the  time  without  actually  having  to  be  taken  to  the 
hospital;  but  many  others  do  suffer  in  health,  vitality  and  ca- 
pacity for  work  from  eating  It.  In  regard  to  salicylic  acid  and 
formaldehyde.  Dr.  Wiley  himself  wrote  In  "Leslie's  Weekly" 
two  years  ago  that  there  is  no  doubt  of  the  pernicious  influence  of 
these  preservatives  In  some  cases.  He  also  said,  truly,  that  "the 
public  supervision  should  look  after  the  weak  and  diseased  di- 
gestive systems  rather  than  the  strong  and  vigorous."  Why, 
nevertheless,  he  chose  to  make  his  Washington  experiments  on 
the  strongest  young  men  he  could  find  Is  a  mystery  he  has  not 
explained.  In  the  "Lancet"  of  Nov.  30,  1901,  an  account  was 
given  of  a  series  of  experiments  with  boric  acid  made  by  Dr. 
RInehart,  In  which  the  symptoms  of  poisoning  disappeared  as 
soon  as  the  use  of  the  drug  was  given  up.  Further  evidence  Is 
furnished  In  the  "Miinchener  Medlclnlsche  Wochenschrlft"  of 
Jan.  26.  Dr.  G.  Merkel,  of  Nuremberg,  experimented  with 
boric  acid  on  eleven  patients,  seven  of  whom  promptly  showed 
disturbance  of  the  gastro-Intestlnal  tract.  The  Inevitable  In- 
ference from  such  facts  Is  either  that  the  use  of  boric  acid  as  a 
preservative  of  food  should  be  prohibited  by  law,  or,  at  least, 
that  the  law  should  require  mention  of  Its  use  on  the  label  of 


HARVEY  W.  WILEY 


UNGASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    27 

canned  goods,  and  in  butter,  cream,  milk  and  meat,  in  order 
that  those  whose  digestion  is  not  as  robust  as  that  of  Dr.  Wiley's 
select  boarders  may  take  warning. 

The  fact  that  these  remarks  were  widely  copied 
showed  that  many  other  editors  shared  my  suspicions. 
Then  came  Dr.  Wiley's  verdict,  which  proclaimed  him 
the  honest,  bold,  incorruptible  champion  of  truth  who 
was  soon  to  become  respected,  admired,  and  idolized 
by  the  whole  American  public,  with  the  exception  of 
those  who  had  commercial  reasons  for  disliking  him. 

Perhaps  I  may  be  pardoned  for  inserting  here  a  ref- 
erence to  an  amusing  incident  that  occurred  during  this 
controversy.  Another  article  of  mine,  in  which  I  had 
spoken  disrespectfully  of  borax,  resulted  the  following 
day  in  a  visit  to  the  office  of  the  "Evening  Post"  by  a 
man  who  wanted  to  see  the  "borax  editor."  He  was 
shown  to  my  room,  and  promptly  proceeded  to  in- 
form me  that  I  was  entirely  mistaken  in  thinking  borax 
harmful.  I  replied  that  I  considered  borax  one  of 
the  most  useful  things  in  the  world,  the  greatest  of 
"dirt-chasers,"  indispensable  on  the  wash  stand  and  in 
the  wash  house ;  but  as  for  internal  use,  I  had  had  days 
of  discomfort  which  made  me  look  on  it  with  feel- 
ings of  genuine  alarm. 

"I  '11  tell  you  what  I  '11  do!"  retorted  the  man,  who 
represented  one  of  the  large  borax  companies.  "I  am 
willing  to  take  a  glass  of  water,  put  in  a  tablespoonful 
of  borax  and  drink  it  right  before  you."     "That's 


28  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

nothing,"  I  replied;  "I  wouldn't  hesitate  to  do  the 
same  thing.  Borax  is  not  a  deadly  drug  like  arsenic  or 
strychnine,  it  is  a  chemical  which,  taken  into  the 
stomach  in  small  doses  day  after  day,  week  after  week, 
and  month  after  month,  acts  as  a  cumulative  poison, 
gradually  weakening  even  the  strongest  stomach;  and, 
inasmuch  as  the  stomach  is  the  source  of  most  diseases, 
thus  paving  the  way  for  all  sorts  of  troubles."^ 

CONDIMENTS    VERSUS    CHEMICAL    PRESERVATIVES. 

Until  about  three  decades  ago  it  was  customary  the 
world  over  to  cure  meats  with  condimental  substances, 
particularly  salt,  vinegar,  sugar,  and  wood  smoke. 
These  not  only  preserved  the  meats  but  developed  their 
inherent  flavors,  while  adding  others  that  were  equally 
relished  by  consumers,  thus  enabling  them  to  enjoy  their 
meals  without  disagreeable  and  depressing  after-effects. 

All  at  once,  like  a  devastating  avalanche,  the  whole- 
sale use  of  non-condimental  chemicals  tumbled  upon 
the  country.  Why  the  avalanche  grew  so  fast  may 
be  gathered  from  a  few  lines  on  page  37  of  the  second 
edition  of  Dr.  Wiley's  admirable  book,  just  referred 
to  in  a  footnote;  lines  which  deserve  to  be  printed 

1  The  argument  that  small  doses  of  chemicals  can  do  no  harm 
has  been  demolished  with  merciless  logic  by  Dr.  Wiley  in  his  ''Foods 
and  Their  Adulteration"  (second  edition,  pp. 38-40).  This  admirable 
book  should  be  in  every  home,  for  daily  reference.  It  gives,  in  un- 
technical  language  a  vast  amount  of  information  regarding  all  our 
important  foods,  with  hints  as  to  the  detection  of  dangerous  or  objec- 
tionable impurities. 


UNGASTRONOMIC     AMERICA    29 

in  italics,  and  which  every  reader  should  engrave  on 
his  memory: 


The  old-fashioned  way 

The  chemicals  employed  are  those  known  as  germi- 
cides. In  the  quantities  used  they  neither  impart  a 
taste  nor  odor  to  a  preserved  meat^  hut  by  their  germi- 


30  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

cidal  properties  prevent  the  development  of  organic 
ferments  and  thus  make  the  preservation  of  meat  far 
more  certain  and  very  much  less  expensive.  By  the  use 
of  some  chemicals  the  salting^  sugaring^  and  smoking 
of  preserved  meat  may  be  done  with  very  much  less 
care^  in  a  very  much  shorter  time^  and  at  a  very  greatly 
reduced  expense.  For  this  reason  the  'practice  has 
gained  a  great  vogue^  not  as  a  means  of  benefiting  the 
consumers.,  but  rather  as  a  means  of  enriching  the 
packer  and  dealer.  Chemical  preservatives  are  also 
highly  objectionable  because  they  keep  meats  appar- 
ently fresh.,  while  in  reality  changes  of  the  most  dan- 
gerous character  may  be  going  on.  They  thus  prevent 
the  display  of  the  red  light  danger  signal. 

Concerning  this  last  point  the  London  "Lancet"  has 
used  another  and  equally  forcible  simile: 

It  IS  by  no  means  certain  that  preservatives  In  small  quan- 
tities can  prevent  decomposition.  They  do  stop  putrefaction 
and  thus  destroy  the  signs  by  which  decomposition  Is  made  evi- 
dent to  the  senses.  Their  effect  resembles  that  of  tying  down 
the  safety  valve  of  a  steam  engine.  The  advocates  of  food  pre- 
servatives seem  always  to  Ignore,  or  to  be  Ignorant  of,  the  op- 
portunity afforded  and  advantage  taken  of  their  use  for  dirty 
and  fraudulent  practices. 

These  remarks  are  of  the  utmost  importance,  for  they 
call  attention  to  the  fact  that  even  if  the  chemical,  non- 
condimental  preservatives  were  not  slow  poisons,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  forbid  their  use  because  they  en- 


UNGASTRONOMIC     AMERICA    31 

able  unscrupulous  persons  to  make  foods  of  the  most 
nauseating  substances.     Let  me  quote  another  expert, 

■u/Vin   Qfciffs   tVip   rn<;p   viviHlv 


who  states  the  case  vividly 


Milk,  eggs  and  fish  are  three  foods  especially  which  become 
extremely  dangerous  when  decomposition  sets  in.  The  chemi- 
cals placed  in  them  by  dealers  destroy  the  offensive  taste  and 
odor,  thus  robbing  nature  of  her  means  of  protecting  us  from 
danger.  Many  little  children  killed  from  eating  ice  cream  and 
bakery  products  never  would  have  tasted  them  if  the  smell  and 
taste  of  the  rotten  eggs  and  putrid  milk  had  not  been  hidden  by 
the  chemicals.  The  vilest,  most  malodorous  factory  refuse  may 
be  made  pleasant  to  the  sight,  taste  and  smell  through  the  mag- 
ical effects  of  benzoate  of  soda,  saccharin  and  coal  tar  dye.  The 
coal  tar  dye  gives  a  clear,  translucent  appearance  to  the  product ; 
the  saccharin  sweetens  it  and  benzoate  of  soda  embalms  it  so 
it  will  keep  for  a  decade  without  spoiling.  These  disguised 
putrid  foods  are  additionally  dangerous  in  hot  weather. 

SCOTCHED,    NOT    KILLED. 

The  great  outcry  raised  by  all  these  startling  reve- 
lations concerning  the  unscrupulous  methods  of  the  food 
poisoners  resulted  in  the  passage,  in  1906,  of  the  epoch- 
making  Food  and  Drugs  Act,  which  gave  the  United 
States  a  most  elaborate  and  minute  set  of  laws  for  the 
protection  of  the  public  and  the  punishment  of  of- 
fenders. The  result  was  an  immediate  and  decided 
improvement  in  many  departments,  especially  that  of 
canned  fruits,  concerning  which  Dr.  Wiley  wrote  in 
1911  that  "the  time  is  now  rapidly  approaching  when 
all  such  goods  will  be  free  of  any  imitation  or  adultera- 


32  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

tion,  and  this  will  add  greatly  to  their  value  in  the 
markets  of  the  country." 

In  many  other  directions,  however,  the  drugging  of 
foods  with  slow  poisons  continued.  The  snake  was 
only  scotched,  not  killed. 

"If  you  took  all  the  food  in  New  York  City  to-day 
and  put  it  in  a  big  tent  down  in  Texas,  I  would  throw 
away  40  per  cent,  of  it,"  said  Gaston  G.  Netter  of  the 
Geneva  White  Cross  Society  (which  is  the  Interna- 
tional Pure  Food  Association),  in  October,  1911. 
"The  people  here  in  New  York  City  are  being  hourly 
poisoned  by  food  labeled  as  absolutely  pure.  I  buy 
it  and  test  it  every  day  and  I  know.  I  saw  some 
sardines  marked  'pure  sardines  in  olive  oil.'  They 
were  a  disintegrated  mass  of  decayed,  poisonous  fish, 
and  the  oil  had  never  known  an  olive.  A  large  per- 
centage of  the  vinegar  used  for  preserving  such  things 
as  prunes  is  an  acidulated  preparation  fatal  to  the  lin- 
ing of  the  stomach." 

The  vinegar  sold  by  many  grocers  in  defiance  of 
the  law  is  made  with  acetic  acid,  which  is  prepared 
by  the  destructive  distillation  of  wood.  So  little  of 
this  is  needed  that  the  adulterator  can  make  a  gallon 
of  "vinegar"  at  a  cost  of  two  cents,  or  a  barrel  for  a 
dollar.  This,  sold  in  bottles,  yields  a  profit  of  over 
$20  a  barrel.  Sometimes  a  trace  of  malic  acid  or  con- 
centrated apple  juice  is  added  to  give  a  reaction  which 
may  fool  the  analyst.     It  is  this  poisonous  stuff  that 


UNGASTRONOMIC     AMERICA    33 

is  used  in  American  homes  to  dress  salads  and  is  put 
into  bottles  of  chow  chow,  chili  sauce,  and  the  pickles 
so  dear  to  school  children. 

Concerning  the  cheap  candies  that  are  still  dearer  to 
the  children,  Harry  P.  Cassidy  in  an  address  before  the 
wholesale  candy  dealers  (reported  in  the  New  York 
"Sun"  of  March  10,  1912),  said: 

"We  have  found  burnt  umber  in  candy  which  is 
sold  and  guaranteed  as  pure  to  the  small  shopkeepers. 
We  have  found  stearin  in  it  which  melts  only  at  a 
temperature  of  135  degrees  Fahrenheit,  whereas  the 
temperature  of  the  human  body  is  only  98.6  degrees. 
We  have  found  furniture  glue  and  dangerous  ether 
flavoring  matter  and  paraffin  and  shellac  and  many 
other  injurious  substances  which  the  members  of  this 
association  handle." 

Another  speaker  at  this  meeting.  Prof.  Charles 
La  Wall,  spoke  of  lampblack  as  being  used  to  color 
so-called  licorice  and  of  marshmallows  that  had  been 
blued  with  ultramarine,  just  as  bluing  is  used  in  wash- 
ing clothes.  Poisonous  sulphuric  acid  may  be  con- 
tained in  molasses,  glucose,  shredded  cocoanut  and 
many  other  things.  "As  candies  are  often  composed 
chiefly  of  these  four  products,  a  child  in  buying  a 
penny's  worth  of  candy  may  get  four  doses  in  one  of 
the  deadly  sulphites  such  as  the  cleaner  uses  in  whiten- 
ing our  straw  hats." 

America  is  specially  noted,  as  Rutledge  Rutherford 


34  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

remarks  in  the  "National  Food  Magazine"  (1912),  for 
two  things — its  chemicalized  food  and  its  infantile 
mortality.  According  to  the  estimate  of  the  New 
York  food  expert,  Alfred  W.  McCann,  three  million 
persons  in  the  United  States  were  made  ill  by  adulter- 
ated foods  in  1911. 

That  was  five  years  after  the  passing  of  the  Pure 
Food  Law.  The  trouble  with  that  law  is  that  it  is 
not  interstate.  A  dishonest  man  in  one  State  can  do 
all  the  food  "doping"  he  pleases  as  long  as  he  does  not 
sell  any  of  it  in  another  State.  Most  of  the  States 
now  have  laws  of  their  own  on  this  matter,  but  often 
they  leave  much  to  be  desired. 

What  is  worse,  these  laws  are  not  enforced;  or,  if 
the  criminals  are  brought  to  bay,  the  punishment  is  so 
mild  that  it  does  not  prevent  a  repetition  of  the  of- 
fense. "If  a  grocer  knew  that  a  can  of  tomatoes  or 
a  can  of  sardines  sold  by  him  could  be  taken  to  the 
comer  and  analyzed  and  if  found  bad  that  he  would 
be  prosecuted,  the  pure  food  law  would  be  a  real 
thing,"  says  Gaston  G.  Netter,  who  asserts  that  if 
New  York  City  would  bring  about  such  a  reform — 
at  a  cost  of  perhaps  $150,000  a  year — it  would  "do 
away  with  half  the  medical  clinics." 

Fines  alone  will  not  suffice  to  bring  about  a  re- 
form. We  can  hardly  follow  the  example  of  the 
Turks  who,  if  a  baker  gives  false  weight  or  adulterates 
his  bread,  cut  off  one  of  his  ears  and  nail  it  to  the 


UNGASTRONOMIC     AMERICA    35 

door  post.  But  we  could  follow  the  example  of  the 
wise  municipal  officials  who  compelled  the  Munich 
brewers  to  make  honest  beer,  out  of  malt  and  hops 
alone.  At  first,  fines  were  imposed  for  using  other 
materials,  and  these  fines  were  made  larger  and  larger; 
but  the  brewers  found  they  could  pay  the  highest  fines 
and  still  save  money  by  using  chemicals.  Then  the 
lawmakers  changed  their  tactics;  the  "man  highest  up" 
was  threatened  with  imprisonment.  The  millionaire 
brewers  had  a  pardonable  aversion  to  jail — and  from 
that  time  on  Munich  beer  became  the  best  in  the 
world.  Ere  long,  whole  trainloads  of  it  began  to  be 
sent  daily  in  all  directions — to  North  Germany  and 
Russia,  to  Paris  and  London,  to  Vienna,  and  to  the 
cities  of  Italy.  The  brewers  had  been  compelled,  at 
pistol's  point,  to  acknowledge  the  truth  that,  after  all, 
in  the  long  run,  honesty  is  the  best  policy. 

Some  of  the  largest  American  manufacturing  firms 
have  followed  this  policy  voluntarily,  though  the 
prices  they  have  to  pay  for  good  fresh  material  places 
them  at  a  great  disadvantage  to  the  adulterators  who 
buy  any  rotten  old  thing  and  '"renovate"  it,  or  else 
make  the  article  entirely  of  chemicals. 

"In  four  years,"  said  Alfred  W.  McCann  (in  March, 
1912),  "the  Government  has  caught  nearly  fifty 
wholesale  adulterators  in  the  act  of  shipping  bogus 
vinegar  from  one  State  into  another.  In  every  "in- 
stance  the  Government  won   its  case,   but  in  every 


36  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

instance  petty  fines  were  inflicted  by  the  courts  and  the 
same  offenders  were  caught  again  and  again.  .  .  . 
Small  fines  have  no  deterrent  effect  on  food  frauds. 
The  game  is  too  profitable  to  suffer  extinction  under 
any  other  influence  than  jail  sentences,  and  jail  sen- 
tences have  not  been  imposed  in  a  single  case  brought 
by  the  Government  against  food  or  drug  adulterators." 

Food  and  drug  adulterators  are  wealthy  men,  but 
they  are  not  stingy.  They  gladly  share  their  sordid 
earnings  with  the  politicians  who  protect  them. 
"Why  do  the  States  delay  in  enacting  uniform  laws 
patterned  after  the  excellent  national  laws?"  asks  Mr. 
McCann;  and  his  answer  tells  the  plain  truth:  "Each 
State  has  some  powerful  pet  food  industry  to  protect 
and  some  weak  legislators  willing  to  do  the  bidding  of 
the  fakers." 

Every  reader  of  this  book  perused  in  the  newspapers 
the  story  of  the  disgraceful  conspiracy  in  Washington 
against  Dr.  Wiley,  and  remembers  vividly  the  nation- 
wide outburst  of  indignation  which  came  to  the  rescue 
of  the  courageous  chemist  and  made  him  a  national 
hero.  He  remained  for  the  time  being,  but  his  en- 
emies were  not  punished,  although  the  President 
promised  to  reform  the  Department  of  Agriculture. 
His  failure  to  do  so  is  one  of  the  principal  reasons  why 
he  was  not  re-elected.  Dr.  Wiley,  seeing  that  his 
efforts  to  secure  the  enforcement  of  the  Pure  Food 
Laws  were  useless,   at  last  resigned,   and  in  "Good 


UNGASTRONOMIC     AMERICA    37 

Housekeeping"  for  October,  1912,  he  gave  some  of  the 
reasons  for  this  step. 

The  Remsen  Board  was  created  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  reviewing  his  decisions  against  food  manipula- 
tors. It  never  missed  a  chance  to  reverse  them,  to 
the  huge  delight  of  certain  manufacturers  and 
dealers.  Although  the  Moss  investigating  committee 
unanimously  pronounced  the  Remsen  Board  as  wholly 
without  authority,  its  decisions  were  followed  by 
officials  of  the  Government;  important  matters  re- 
ferred to  it  were  held  in  abeyance.  For  instance,  an 
exhaustive  report  of  the  experiments  made  in  the 
Bureau  of  Chemistry,  which  showed,  in  Dr.  Wiley's 
opinion,  "the  injuriousness  of  copper  sulphate  when 
added  to  foods,  has  been  hibernating  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  Archives  for  the  past  four  years  and  its  use 
permitted  in  the  interim." 

The  opposition  to  Dr.  Wiley's  decisions  brought 
about  "practical  paralysis  in  all  matters  pertaining  to 
the  addition  of  benzoic  acid,  sulphurous  acid,  sacchar- 
ine, sulphate  of  copper,  and  alum  to  food  products.  As 
it  was  the  addition  of  these  bodies  which  constituted  95 
per  cent,  of  the  total  adulteration  practised,  it  is  easy 
to  see  that,  so  far  as  adulteration  was  concerned,  the 
food  law  became  practically  a  dead  letter." 

The  physicians  of  the  country,  who,  better  than 
others,  know  the  danger  of  using  drugs  indiscrimi- 
nately, sided  with  Dr.  Wiley.    At  a  meeting  in  Pitts- 


38  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

burg  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  represent- 
ing 25,000  physicians  and  surgeons,  that  body  "in  spite 
of  the  decision  of  the  referee  board,  pledged  itself  un- 
compromisingly against  benzoate  of  soda  and  all  other 
chemical  forms  of  food  preservatives." 

How  bitterly  the  war  against  Dr.  Wiley  and  pure- 
food  legislation  was  carried  on,  not  only  at  Washing- 
ton but  in  various  States  with  aid  from  Washington, 
is  illustrated  by  the  following  extract  from  a  letter 
written  to  Dr.  Wiley  by  the  Health  Commissioner  of 
Indiana : 

It  Is  not  necessary  to  recall  to  you  the  tremendous  difficulties 
under  which  the  State  labored  when  it  endeavored  to  prevent 
the  overthrow  of  Its  pure  food  law  because  of  the  activities  of 
the  Department  of  Agriculture  In  behalf  of  the  firms  who  were 
seeking  that  end ;  how  we  were  refused  the  assistance  of  yourself 
and  your  chemists;  how  we  had  to  compel  the  getting  of  testi- 
mony by  an  order  of  the  court  of  the  District  of  Columbia,  and 
how,  on  the  other  hand,  employees  of  the  Government  known  to 
be  In  sympathy  with  the  firms  bringing  suit  against  us  were 
sent  to  Indianapolis  to  testify  against  the  State  at  the  expense 
of  the  Department  of  Agriculture. 

Another  illustration  of  the  war  on  the  Pure  Food 
Laws  was  given  in  the  New  York  "Globe"  of  Oct.  24, 
1912,  by  Alfred  W.  McCann.  After  pointing  out  that 
"there  has  been  no  let-up  in  attempts  to  deceive,"  and 
that  "food  ideals  depend  absolutely  on  the  integrity 
and  zeal  of  a  few  so-called  fanatics  like  Dr.  Wiley, 
who  are  thus  far  responsible  for  all  the  advance  we 
have  made,"  he  goes  on  to  say: 


UNGASTRONOMIC     AMERICA    39 

In  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  one  of  the  most  active  pure 
food  workers,  who  has  contributed  energy  and  zeal  to  the  cause 
of  the  people,  H.  P.  Cassidy,  special  agent  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Dairy  and  Food  Department,  after  ten  years  of  remarkable  serv- 
ice has  been  removed  from  office  by  the  same  kind  of  pressure 
which  finally  disposed  of  Dr.  Wiley. 

Charges  were  made  a  few  days  ago  against  Mr.  Cassidy, 
whose  activity  had  resulted  in  more  than  8,000  arrests  for  food 
adulterations  in  the  City  of  Philadelphia  alone.  He  demanded 
a  hearing  before  the  governor.  The  hearing  was  granted.  The 
charges  fell  to  pieces  and  Mr.  Cassidy,  like  Dr.  Wiley,  was 
vindicated.  Two  days  later  the  Pennsylvania  authorities  noti- 
fied him  that,  although  he  was  found  guiltless,  harmonious  re- 
lations between  him  and  his  chiefs  had  been  strained,  and  there- 
fore for  the  good  of  the  service  it  was  decided  that  he  should  be 
dismissed. 

If  the  pure  food  movement  were  making  the  kind  of  progress 
which  it  is  thought  to  be  making,  such  backward  steps  would 
not  be  tolerated  by  the  people,  for  the  dismissal  from  office  of 
such  a  man  as  Cassidy  will  serve  as  a  warning  to  other  pure  food 
officials  not  to  be  too  zealous  in  the  discharge  of  their  duties. 

The  direct  result  of  Cassidy's  dismissal  will  show  itself  in  the 
State  of  Pennsylvania  by  a  long  line  of  cowardice  in  applying  the 
law.     I  make  this  prophecy  and  guarantee  its  fulfilment. 

It  is  needless  to  dwell  further  on  these  disgraceful 
efforts  to  thwart  the  Pure  Food  Laws.  Dr.  Wiley  did 
not  exaggerate  when  in  summing  up  the  situation  he 
printed  the  following,  in  italics: 

No  further  blot  upon  the  administration  of  law  can^ 
in  my  opinion^  he  found  in  the  history  of  the  United 
States  than  this  effort  of  the  United  Elates  Govern- 
ment to  paralyze^  belittle^  and  destroy  a  law  passed  in 
the  interests  of  the  people  of  the  country. 


n^' 


II 

VITAL  IMPORTANCE  OF  FLAVOR 

TARTLING  as  are  the  facts  in  the  fore- 
going chapter,  they  do  not  tell  the 
whole  story.  We  have  seen  that  the 
non-condimental  chemical  preservatives 
used  by  the  food  poisoners  are  highly 
objectionable  on  two  grounds:  (i)  be- 
cause they  are  usually  injurious  and  often  deadly;  and 
(2)  because  they  enable  unscrupulous  persons  to  use  the 
filthiest,  rottenest  material  and  so  doctor  it  as  to  de- 
ceive the  consumer  into  believing  it  to  be  wholesome 
food,  whereas  it  may,  and  often  does,  result  in  ptomaine 
poisoning. 

But  there  is  a  third  indictment  against  the  food 

sophisticators.    The  chemicals  they  use,  not  only  make 

40 


IMPORTANCE     OF     FLAVOR      41 

the  food  they  manipulate  dangerous  to  eat,  but  they 
also  diminish  and  often  completely  destroy  its  ¥  lav  or. 
This  destruction  of  the  food  Flavors  may  seem  to 
those  who  have  given  no  special  attention  to  this  mat- 
ter a  thing  to  be  regretted,  indeed,  but  not  an  actual 
crime.     That  it  is  a  real  crime,  because  it  helps  to 
undermine  the  consumers'  health,  I  shall  demonstrate   • 
in   this   chapter.     It   is  necessary   to  know   the  facts 
now  to  be  set  forth  in  order  to  realize  the  full  signifi- 
cance of  the  deplorable  state  of  affairs  to  be  revealed 
in  the  next  chapter,  entitled  Our  Denatured  Foods. 
That  chapter  will  continue  the  subject  of  Ungastro- 
nomic   America,    wherefore    Chapter    II   may   be    re- 
garded as  an  Intermezzo — but  a  most  important  one, 
for  it  contains  truths  that  are  of  vital  importance  to 
ever3^body.     Indeed,  it  is  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  im- 
pressing these  truths  on  as  many  intelligent  persons 
as  possible  that  I  am  writing  this  book. 

SENSUAL    INDULGENCE    AS    A    DUTY. 

Too  long  we  have  been  allowing  covetous  manu- 
facturers and  dealers  and  incompetent  or  indolent 
cooks  to  spoil  our  naturally  good  food.  We  have  done 
this  because  we  have  not  as  a  nation  understood  that 
there  is  nothing  in  the  world  on  which  our  health  and 
hourly  comfort,  our  happiness  and  our  capacity  for 
hard  work,  depend  so  much  as  on  the  Flavor  of 
food — those  savory  qualities  which  make  it  appetizing 


42  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

and  enjoyable  and  therefore  digestible  and  helpful. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  most  important 
problem  now  before  the  A?7ierican  public  is  to  learn 
to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  the  table  and  to  insist  on  hav- 
ing savory  food  at  every  meal. 

There  was  a  time  when  it  would  have  been  con- 
sidered rank  heresy  to  express  such  an  opinion,  and 
even  to-day  there  are  millions  of  honest  folk  who  hold 
that  the  enjoyment  of  a  good  meal  is  merely  a  form 
of  sybaritic  indulgence. 

When  'Ruskin  wrote  his  "Modern  Painters"  he  re- 
ferred to  the  indulgence  of  taste  as  an  "ignoble  source 
of  pleasure."  He  lived  to  realize  the  foolishness  of 
this  sneer;  in  one  of  those  amusing  footnotes  which  he 
contributed  to  the  final  edition  of  that  great  work, 
and  in  which  he  often  assails  his  own  former  opinions 
with  merciless  severity,  he  denounces  the  "cruelty  and 
absurdity"  of  his  failing  to  learn  to  appreciate  the 
dainties  provided  by  his  father.  But  his  earlier 
opinion  reflected  the  general  attitude  of  the  time  to- 
ward the  pleasures  of  the  table. 

Fortunately,  in  our  efforts  to  fight  the  great  Ameri- 
can plague — dyspepsia — we  are  no  longer  seriously 
hampered  by  that  Puritan  severity  which  caused  the 
father  of  Walter  Scott,  when  young  Walter  one  day 
expressed  his  enjoyment  of  the  soup,  to  promptly  mix 
with  it  a  pint  of  water  to  take  the  devil  out  of  it. 

America's  leading  educator,  Ex-President  Eliot  of 


IMPORTANCE     OF    FLAVOR      43 

Harvard,  has  expressed  the  more  rational  view  of  our 
time  in  these  words:  "Sensuous  pleasures,  like  eating 
and  drinking,  are  sometimes  described  as  animal,  and 
therefore  unworthy,  but  men  are  animals  and  have  a 
right  to  enjoy  without  reproach  those  pleasures  of  ani- 
mal existence  which  maintain  health,  strength,  and 
life  itself." 

We  may  go  farther  than  that,  asserting  that  not 
only  have  we  a  right  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  the 
table,  but  it  is  our  moral  duty  to  do  so.  The  highest 
laws  of  health  demand  of  us  that  we  get  as  much 
pleasure  out  of  our  meals  as  possible.  To  prove  this 
statement  is  the  main  object  of  the  present  volume, 
nearly  every  page  of  which  bears  witness  to  its  truth, 
directly  or  indirectly. 

GLADSTONE    AND    FLETCHER. 

There  is  an  old  German  proverb  to  the  effect  that 
if  food  is  properly  chewed  it  is  half  digested V  Gut 
gehaut  ist  halh  verdaut. 

This  is  literally  true,  but  in  England  and  America, 
although  physicians  and  others  have  long  known  it 
to  be  so,  it  was  not  impressed  on  the  general  pub- 
lic's attention  until  the  newspapers  bega^  to  comment 
— some  seriously,  others  facetiously — on  the  statement 
that  Gladstone,  in  1848,  adopted  certain  rules  for 
chewing  food  to  which  he  ever  after  adhered  and  to 
which  some  observers  attributed  his  remarkable  phys- 


44  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

ical  vigor.  "Previous  to  that,"  said  the  "Pall  Mall 
Gazette,"  "he  had  always  paid  great  attention  to  the 
requirements  of  nature,  but  at  that  date  he  laid  down  as 
a  rule  for  his  children  that  thirty- two  bites  should  be 
given  to  each  mouthful  of  meat  and  a  somewhat  lesser 
number  to  bread,  fish,  etc." 

Now  Gladstone  was  wrong  in  suggesting  that  meat 
needed  more  munching  than  bread.  The  stomach  takes 
care  of  meat  if  it  is  not  swallowed  in  too  large  chunks ; 
whereas  bread,  as  well  as  potatoes,  together  with  oat- 
meal and  other  cereals,  no  matter  how  soft,  should  be 
kept  in  the  mouth  some  time  to  enable  the  saliva  to 
partly  digest  them  and  prepare  them  for  the  lower 
viscera. 

This  error,  however,  did  not  detract  seriously  from 
the  value  of  Gladstone's  directions.  The  main  thing 
was  that  his  "home  rule"  called  the  attention  of  two 
nations  to  the  unwisdom  of  bolting  food  and  the  ad- 
vantage to  health  resulting  from  keeping  it  for  some 
time  in  the  mouth.  In  its  far-reaching  effect  on  mil- 
lions in  two  worlds  it  was  perhaps  of  greater  and  more 
lasting  value  than  any  of  his  acts  as  a  statesman. 

This  assertion  gains  strength  from  the  fact  that  it 
was  Gladstone's  example  that  started  Horace  Fletcher 
on  his  road  as  a  reformer  of  the  foolish  eating  habits 
of  Americans,  and  others,  but  Americans  in  particu- 
lar. 

He  has  himself  related  (in  the  "Ladies'  Home  Jour- 


IMPORTANCE     OF     FLAVOR      45 

nal"  for  September,  1909)  how  it  was  that  his  thoughts 
were  first  directed  into  this  channel  through  an  epi- 
curean friend  who  had  a  snipe  estate  among  the 
marshlands  of  Louisiana  and  a  truffle  preserve  in 
France,  and  who  faithfully  followed  Gladstone's  rules 
in  regard  to  the  thorough  chewing  of  food.  In  1898 
Mr.  Fletcher  began  to  work  out  the  problem  for  him- 
self, to  the  great  advantage  of  his  health. 

At  the  age  of  forty  he  was  an  old  man,  on  the  way 
to  a  rapid  decline.  His  hair  was  white,  he  weighed 
217  pounds,  he  was  harrowed  by  indigestion,  and  had 
"that  tired  feeling."  At  the  age  of  sixty,  after  eleven 
years  of  experiment,  he  had  reduced  his  weight  to  170 
pounds,  felt  strong  and  well,  and  had  forgotten  what 
it  was  to  have  the  tired  feeling. 

His  experience  thus  was  similar  to  that  of  the  Italian 
nobleman,  Luigi  Cornaro  (1467-1566),  who  was 
a  dissipated  wreck  at  the  age  of  forty,  but  who  by  re- 
forming his  way  of  eating,  regained  his  health  and 
lived  to  be  nearly  a  hundred.  After  his  eighty-third 
year  he  wrote  four  treatises  on  diet  and*  longevity ;  his 
autobiography  has  passed  through  more  than  forty 
English  editions.  His  wisdom  might  be  summed  up 
in  these  words:  "As  you  grow  older  eat  less." 

Horace  Fletcher  is  the  Cornaro  of  the  ninteenth  cen- 
tury. Everybody  who  ever  "knows  he  has  a  stomach" 
should  read  one  or  both  the  books  he  has  written  on 
this  subject:  "The  A  B-Z  of  Our  Own  Nutrition,"  and 


46  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

"The  New  Glutton  or  Epicure."  The  first  named 
owes  its  value  largely  to  the  fact  that  it  includes  re- 
prints of  valuable  papers  by  eminent  men  of  science 
and  physicians,  the  investigations  of  most  of  whom 
were  in  part  prompted,  or  inspired,  by  Mr.  Fletcher's 
writings.  The  most  important  of  these  are  Dr.  Har- 
vey Campbell's  Observations  on  Mastication,  and 
Prof.  Pawlow's  articles  on  Psychic  Influence  in  Di- 
gestion. 

Most  persons  labor — or  act  as  if  they  labored — 
under  the  delusion  that  the  mouth  was  made  chiefly 
for  the  ingestion  of  food  and  that  the  sole  use  of  saliva 
is  to  lubricate  it  so  that  it  can  be  easily  and  quickly 
swallowed.  Mr.  Fletcher  did  not  discover  the  fact 
that  the  mouth  is  also  a  most  important  organ  of  di- 
gestion^ with  the  aid  of  saliva;  but  he  emphasized  this 
important  fact  in  his  writings  as  no  other  writer  had 
ever  done,  proclaiming  it  from  the  housetops  till  thou- 
sands began  to  listen  and  heed  and  learn  and  benefit 
by  his  preaching;  and  therein  lies  the  importance  of 
his  name  in  the  history  of  dietetic  reform. 

The  gist  of  his  doctrine  may  be  given  in  a  few  words : 
keep  all  food  (soft  as  well  as  hard,  liquid  as  well  as 
solid,  moist  as  well  as  dry)  in  the  mouth  and  chew 
it  till  it  has  become  thoroughly  mingled  with  the 
saliva,  has  lost  all  its  flavor,  and  is  ready  to  disap- 
pear down  the  throat  without  an  effort  at  swallow- 
ing.    Gladstone's   directions   in  regard  to  thirty-two 


HORACE   FLETCHER 


IMPORTANCE    OF    FLAVOR      47 

masticatory  movements  are  all  right  for  some  foods,, 
but  others  require  no  more  than  twenty,  while  for 
some  (onions)  seven  hundred  hardly  suffice  to  re- 
move the  odor  and  make  them  digestible.  Unless  the 
mouth  thus  does  its  work^  the  lower  digestive  tract  has 
to  do  it  at  ten  times  the  expenditure  of  vital  force^  and 
the  result  is  dyspepsia. 

Never,  surely,  was  preaching  more  needed  than  these 
sermons  of  Horace  Fletcher  to  the  victims  of  America's 
national  scourge  of  chronic  indigestion. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  a  considerable 
amount  of  questionable  faddism  and  exaggeration  in 
his  doctrines.  He,  himself,  frankly  apologizes  for 
such  details  in  them  as  "may  suggest  the  scrappiness 
and  extravagance  of  an  intemperate  screed,"  on  the 
ground  that  "so-called  screeds  sometimes  attract  at= 
tention  where  sober  statement  fails  to  be  heard" ;  which 
is  unfortunately  true. 

Many  of  Fletcher's  followers  accept  his  exaggera- 
tions along  with  the  sound  parts  of  his  doctrines. 
They  endorse  the  statements  that  he,  "in  inaugurating 
the  chewing  reform  has  done  more  to  help  suffering 
humanity  than  any  other  man  of  the  present  genera- 
tion"; or,  as  another  writer,  a  physician,  put  it  in  a 
letter  to  him:  "What  you  have  done  to  unfold  physio- 
logic mastication  means  more  for  human  weal  than  all 
the  mere  medical  prescribers  have  given  the  world  from 
Adam  to  the  present  day." 


48  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  medical  and  other  scientific 
writers  were  culpable  in  not  enlightening  the  public 
on  these  important  matters,  and  it  serves  them  right, 
therefore,  if  Fletcher  has  got  the  credit  and  the  fame 
for  doing  this.  It  is  estimated  that  there  are  already 
more  than  200,000  "Fletcherites"  in  the  United  States. 
In  the  hope  of  increasing  their  number,  in  the  rational 
sense  of  the  word,  let  me  dwell  on  a  few  of  the  things 
in  which,  in  my  opinion,  Mr.  Fletcher  is  right,  and 
some  of  those  beside  which  readers  of  his  books  will 
do  well  to  place  question  marks.  In  particular,  I  wish 
to  call  further  attention  to  his  valuable  remarks  on 
the  necessity  of  doing  more  "mouth  work"  than  most 
of  us  do,  and  on  the  importance  of  agreeable  Flavor  in 
food  as  an  aid  to  digestion. 

Many  thousands  of  otherwise  healthy  persons  be- 
wail the  fact  that  they  have  to  avoid  some  of  their 
favorite  dishes  because  they  find  them  indigestible. 
To  these  individuals  Fletcherism,  as  endorsed  by  Dr. 
Campbell,  brings  the  cheering  message  that  they  can 
eat  anything  they  please  provided  they  give  it  the 
proper  mouth  treatment. 

Inasmuch  as  individuals  differ  in  regard  to  the  sup- 
ply of  saliva,  no  general  rules  can  be  laid  down  as  to 
how  many  bites  any  particular  mouthful  requires. 
One  person  may  dispose  of  a  morsel  of  bread  in  thirty 
mastications  while  another  may  need  fifty  before  it  has 
disappeared  down  the  throat  without  an  effort  at  swal- 


IMPORTANCE     OF     FLAVOR      49 

lowing.     Mr.  Fletcher  once  had  a  tussle  with  a  chal- 
lot,  or  young  onion,  which  "required  722  mastications 
before  disappearing  through  involuntary  swallowing." 
But  when  it  was  down  it  left  no  odor  upon  the  breath   ^-^^i^i 
and  created  no  disturbance  whatever. 

Could  anything  more  triumphantly  proclaim  the 
wonders  of  Fletcherism? 

Here  is  another  miracle :  "Abundant  experiment  has 
been  made  by  those  to  whom  'Boston  brown  bread'  was 
formerly  little  less  than  a  poison,  to  prove  the  as- 
sertion that,  sufficiently  mixed  with  saliva,  it  is  per- 
fectly digestible  and  that  the  delicious  taste  of  the 
bread  after  forty  or  fifty  bites — about  one-half  minute 
— gets  sweeter  and  sweeter,  and  attains  its  greatest 
sweetness  and  most  delicate  taste  at  the  very  last,  when 
it  has  dissolved  into  liquid  form  and  most  of  it  has  es- 
caped into  the  stomach." 

THE    HARM    DONE    BY    SOFT    FOODS. 

Dr.  Campbell,  whose  admirable  articles  on  The  Im- 
portance of  Mastication  cannot  be  too  urgently 
brought  to  the  reader's  attention,^  has  pointed  out  a 
very  important  reason  why  at  present,  more  than  at 
any  other  time  in  the  history  of  man,  there  is  need  of 
mouth  digestion. 

The  art  of  cooking  has  had  a  beautifying  effect  on 

1  They  first  appeared  in  the  London  Lancet,  in  July  and  August, 
1903,  and  are  reprinted  in  Fletcher's  A.  B.-Z.  of  Nutrition,  pp.  96-179. 


50  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

the  human  face.  The  jaws  and  teeth  have  become 
smaller  because  they  are  no  longer  called  upon  to  bite 
off  and  chew  raw,  tough,  and  fibrous  foods,  as  they 
were  in  primitive  days.  One  of  the  results  of  agricul- 
tural progress  has  been  to  diminish  the  fibrous,  cel- 
lulosic  food  and  make  it  more  easy  to  masticate.  The 
food  of  to-day  is  for  the  most  part  soft  and  pappy,  of 
a  kind  which  does  not  compel  thorough  mastication;  so 
much  so  that  Dr.  Campbell  thinks  we  may  speak  of 
this  as  "the  age  of  pap." 

Beginning  with  the  babes,  we  pour  into  their  stomachs 
all  kinds  of  artificial  saccharine  foods  in  liquid  or  semi- 
liquid  form,  following  this  up,  later  on,  with  such 
viands  as  mashed  potatoes  and  gravy,  rusks  soaked  in 
milk,  milk  puddings,  bread  dipped  in  bacon  fat, 
pounded  mutton,  thin  bread  and  butter,  and  the  like. 
Food  of  this  kind  does  not  invite  mastication  (nor 
have  mothers  been  taught  to  teach  their  children  to 
keep  it  in  the  mouth,  the  doctor  might  have  added). 
"Hence  the  instinct  to  masticate  has  little  opportunity 
of  exercise  and  not  being  properly  exercised,  tends  to 
die  out.  Small  wonder  that  the  child  nourished  on 
such  pappy  food  acquires  the  habit  of  bolting  it,  and 
learns  to  reject  hard,  coarse  foods  in  favor  of  the  softer 
kinds;  everything,  nowadays,  must  be  tender,  pultace- 
ous,  or  'short.'  " 

The  evils  resulting  from  the  bolting  of  this  soft 
food  by  children  and  adults  alike  are  of  the  gravest 


IMPORTANCE    OF     FLAVOR      51 

and  most  alarming  kind.  Overeating  and  habitual  in- 
digestion are  two  of  them.  Morbid  craving  for  food 
not  needed  is  another.  It  is  not  improbable  that  the 
habitual  bolting  of  food,  by  the  prolonged  irritation 
to  which  it  gives  rise,  may  predispose  to  cancer  of  the 
stomach.  Napoleon  was  a  notoriously  fast  eater  and 
it  is  well  known  that  he  died  from  this  disease. 

Dr.  Campbell  also  agrees  with  Sir  Frederick  Treves 
that  the  neglect  of  the  mastication  of  food  is  a  potent 
cause  of  appendicitis.  Solid  lumps,  especially  in  the 
case  of  such  articles  as  pineapple,  preserved  ginger, 
nuts,  tough  meat  and  lobster,  are  apt  to  pass  beyond 
the  pylorus  and,  escaping  intestinal  digestion,  to  lodge 
in  the  coecum  and  precipitate  an  attack  of  that  dreaded 
disease,  the  most  common  predisposing  cause  of  which 
is  a  loaded  coecum,  often  preceded  by  constipation. 

Summing  up  his  extremely  valuable  paper  on  the 
Evils  of  Insufficient  Mastication,  Dr.  Campbell  comes 
to  the  conclusion  that  "an  appalling  amount  of  misery 
and  suffering  may  be  saved  by  the  simple  expedient  of 
inculcating  the  habit  of  efficient  mastication." 

It  is  difficult  to  teach  an  old  dog  new  tricks.  I  have 
noticed  again  and  again  how  hard  it  is  to  teach  adults 
to  "Fletcherize."  They  begin  it,  find  it  irksome  at 
first,  and  drop  it.  For  thorough  reform  we  must  be- 
gin with  infants;  but  adults  cannot  be  urged  too 
strongly  to  persevere  till  the  habit — like  that  of  breath- 
ing— becomes   automatic.     The   rewards   in   increased 


52  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

health  and  enjoyment  of  life  and  work  are  glorious. 

EPICUREAN    DELIGHTS    FROM    PLAIN    FOOD. 

To  return  to  Fletcher's  own  contributions  to  this 
subject.  Next  to  his  dwelling  on  the  importance  of 
"mouth-work"  he  deserves  most  praise  for  his  re- 
marks on  the  epicurean  delights  resulting  from  slow 
and  rational  eating.  Herein  again,  it  must  be  prem- 
ised, he  was  far  from  being  the  original  discoverer; 
but  he  probably  did  more  to  call  the  general  public's 
attention  to  the  matter  than  any  one  else  had  done, 
thanks  largely  to  his  habit  of  introducing  vivid  il- 
lustrations and  details  of  personal  experiences. 

"  My,  but  I  never  realized  that  potato  is  so  good," 
exclaimed  the  young  lady;  and  "Gracious!  isn't  this 
corn  bully!"  echoed  the  father. 

These  exclamations  express  the  outcome  of  one  of 
Mr.  Fletcher's  experiments  in  teaching  others  how  to 
get  delicious  pleasure  from  the  simplest  and  common- 
est foods  if  munched  according  to  his  directions. 

If  you  bolt  your  food,  he  says,  you  get  "none  of  the 
exquisite  taste  that  Nature's  way  offers  as  an  allure- 
ment for  obeying  her  beneficent  demands.  The  way 
of  Nature  is  the  epicurean  way;  the  other  way  is  noth- 
ing but  piggish  gluttony."  It  is  the  way  of  animals; 
and  Fletcher  named  his  book  "The  New  Glutton  or 
Epicure"  to  call  attention  to  the  two  ways  of  taking 
food. 


IMPORTANCE     OF     FLAVOR      53 

"An  epicurean  cannot  be  a  glutton.  There  may  be 
gluttons  who  are  less  gluttonous  than  other  gluttons,  but 
epicurism  is  like  politeness  and  cleanliness,  and  is  the 
certain  mark  of  gentility."  A  remark  worthy  of  the 
French  epigrammatists! 

Thackeray  called  attention  to  the  exquisite  enjoy- 
ment an  epicure  can  derive  from  a  slice  of  buttered 
brown  bread.  In  the  same  spirit  Fletcher  writes: 
"For  illustration,  try  a  ship's  biscuit — commonly  called 
hardtack — and  keep  it  in  the  mouth,  tasting  it  as  you 
would  a  piece  of  sugar,  till  it  has  disappeared  entirely, 
and  note  what  a  treasure  of  delight  there  is  in  it." 

Again:  "The  most  nutritious  food  does  not  require 
sauces.  It  may  seem  dry  and  tasteless  to  the  first  im- 
pression, but,  as  the  juices  of  the  mouth  get  possession 
of  it,  warm  it  up,  solve  its  life-giving  qualities  out  of 
it  and  coax  it  into  usefulness,  the  delight  of  a  new- 
found delicacy  will  greet  the  discoverer." 

HOW    FLAVOR    HELPS    THE    STOMACH. 

In  all  cases,  be  the  food  simple  or  the  outcome  of  a 
French  chef's  culinary  alchemy,  it  is  its  Flavor  that 
makes  it  agreeable  and  by  so  doing  stimulates  the  flow 
of  the  juices  necessary  for  proper  digestion. 

In  the  case  of  the  mouth  and  its  salivary  glands  this 
is  obvious  to  all.  Everybody  knows  that  the  frag- 
rance of  good  food  "makes  the  mouth  water." 

In  the  case  of  the  stomach,  the  connection  is  much 


S4  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

less  obvious.     Until  a  few  years  ago  even  the  medical 
men  were  in  the  dark  on  this  extremely  important  as- 


r^ 


A> 


1^       tr^Wm'^^-. 


A  French  chef's  culinary  alchemy 


pect  of  the  question,   although  French  and  German 
physiologists  had  made  important  discoveries. 


IMPORTANCE     OF     FLAVOR      55 

It  remained  for  Professor  Pawlow  of  St.  Petersburg 
to  throw  the  bright  light  of  scientific  experiment  on  this 
subject. 

He  demonstrated  in  his  St.  Petersburg  laboratory 
that  the  mere  presence  of  food  in  a  dog's  stomach — 
which  is  like  a  man's  in  that  respect — does  not  suffice 
to  cause  a  flow  of  gastric  juice,  but  that  the  psychic 
factor  we  call  appetite — a  keen  desire  for  food — causes 
an  abundant  flow  of  that  fluid,  without  which  the  di- 
gestion cannot  proceed. 

Now  it  might  be  said  that  there  was  really  no  need 
of  laboratory  experiments  to  tell  us  that  food  eaten 
without  enjoyment  lies  like  lead  in  the  stomach  and 
does  more  harm  than  good. 

It  is  nevertheless  a  great  advantage  to  have  a  sci- 
entific demonstration  of  the  fact  and  an  explanation 
of  it,  because  it  encourages  us  in  the  right  way  of 
eating. 

Instinct  showed  that  way  long  ago;  it  did  its  best 
to  intimate  that  food  should  be  eaten  with  interest 
and  enjoyment. 

Too  often,  unfortunately,  no  attention  has  been  paid 
to  this  instinct.  Among  the  Russians  (who  do  not,  in 
this  respect,  differ  from  other  peoples)  "an  absolutely 
unphysiological  indifference  towards  eating  often  ex- 
ists," Professor  Pawlow  says.  "In  wider  circles  of 
the  community  a  due  conception  of  the  importance  of 
eating  should  be  disseminated.     How   often   do   the 


56  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

people  who  have  charge  of  the  commissariat  pay  at- 
tention solely  to  the  nutritive  value  of  the  food,  or 
place  a  higher  value  on  everything  else  than  taste!" 

Yet  it  is  the  "taste"  (Flavor)  of  food  that  arouses 
the  appetite.  As  the  French  say,  "the  appetite  comes 
while  we  are  eating."  Medical  men  of  various  coun- 
tries in  former  times  paid  special  attention  to  the  res- 
toration of  a  patient's  appetite.  In  more  recent  text 
books  less  attention  is  paid  to  appetite  as  a  symptom; 
but  Prof.  Pawlow's  experiments  have  again,  and  for 
all   time,   demonstrated   its   importance. 

Those  young  ladies  who  think  it  is  "nice"  and  "femi- 
nine" to  pretend  to  have  no  appetite  should  read  the 
Pawlow  papers,  and  have  all  that  nonsense  knocked 
out  of  their  heads.  A  poor  appetite  is  a  danger  sig- 
nal-— a  thing  to  arouse  pity  and  to  be  cured,  just  like 
a  headache  or  a  fever. 

"Appetite  juice"  is  one  of  the  suggestive  names  Pro- 
fessor Pawlow  gives  to  the  fluid  which  digests  food  in 
the  stomach.  There  is  little  or  none  of  it  for  the  man 
who  eats  without  noticing  his  food,  unable  to  distract 
his  thoughts  from  his  work,  as  so  often  happens  to 
those  who  live  in  the  midst  of  the  incessant  turmoil 
of  large  cities.  This  inattention  to  the  act  of  eating 
(to  the  Flavor  of  the  food)  prepares  the  way  for  di- 
gestive disturbances  with  all  the  various  diseases  fol- 
lowing them.  No  medical  treatment  can  help  such  a 
patient — unless  he  reforms  and  eats  rationally. 


IMPORTANCE     OF     FLAVOR      57 

Thus,  the  studies  of  Dr.  Pawlow  fully  bear  out  my 
contention  as  to  the  Vital  Importance  of  Flavor  in 
Food. 

There  is  one  more  of  his  observations  to  which  super- 


An  American  quick-lunch 

lative  Importance  attaches.  One  of  his  experiments 
on  dogs  showed  that  if  food  was  given  gradually  in 
small  quantities,  it  led  to  the  secretion  of  much  stronger 
gastric  juice  than  when  the  animal  was  allowed  to  eat 
the  whole  ration  at  once. 

This  was  a  laboratory  demonstration  of  the  wis- 
dom of  the  best  medical  treatment  of  a  weak  stomach ; 


58  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

"and  such  a  regulation  of  diet,"  continues  the  profes- 
sor, "is  all  the  more  necessary,  since,  in  the  common- 
est disorders  of  the  stomach,  only  the  surface  layers 
of  the  mucous  membrane  are  affected.  It  may,  con- 
sequently, happen  that  the  sensory  surface  of  the 
stomach,  which  should  take  up  the  stimulus  of  the 
chemical  excitant,  is  not  able  to  fulfil  its  duty,  and  the 
period  of  chemical  secretion,  which  ordinarily  lasts  for 
a  long  time,  is  for  the  most  part  disturbed,  or  even 
wholly  absent.  A  strong  psychic  excitation,  a  keen 
feeling  of  appetite,  may  evoke  the  secretory  impulse 
in  the  central  nervous  system  and  send  it  unhindered 
to  the  glands  which  lie  in  the  deeper  as  yet  unaffected 
layers  of  mucous  membrane." 

Doubtless  the  very  interesting  physiological  detail 
here  pointed  out  by  the  eminent  Russian  professor,  ex- 
plains the  dietetic  as  well  as  gastronomic  wisdom  of 
the  old  fashioned  table  d'hote  of  the  European  hotels. 
Half  a  dozen  or  more  courses  follow  one  another 
leisurely  in  course  of  an  hour  or  more  during  which  the 
pleasant  Flavor  of  one  dish  after  another  keeps  the  ap- 
petite on  edge  and  gives  plenty  of  time  for  the  deeper 
as  well  as  the  surface  layers  of  the  glands  to  secrete 
their  beneficent  and  comforting  digestive  juices. 

From  such  a  leisurely  dinner,  with  courses  skilfully 
made  up  of  .contrasting  flavors  to  prevent  the  appetite 
from  flagging,  we  rise  cheerful  and  at  peace  with  all 
the  world,  whereas  an  American  quick-lunch,  or  a  rail- 


IMPORTANCE    OF    FLAVOR      59 

road  dinner  gulped  down  in  ten  minutes  makes  us  feel 
like  swearing  off  eating  for  all  time. 

AN    AMAZING    BLUNDER. 

How  far  we  have  traveled  away  from  that  foolish, 
nay,  criminal  Puritan  notion  that  enjoyment  of  the 
pleasures  of  the  table  is  a  reprehensible  form  of  sensual 
indulgence — the  notion  which  made  Walter  Scott's 
father  pour  hot  water  into  the  soup  because  the  boy 
liked  it! 

That  attitude  was  a  blunder,  a  huge  blunder,  as  the 
preceding  pages  prove. 

A  still  bigger  blunder,  and  one  equally  deplorable 
and  mischievous,  now  claims  our  attention — a  blunder 
so  amazing,  so  incomprehensible  that  it  seems  almost 
incredible:  the  universal  beliefs  among  men  of  science 
as  well  as  the  laity,  that  the  pleasures  of  the  table 
come  to  us  through  the  sense  of  taste. 

How  I  happened  to  discover  that  this  notion  is  a 
blunder,  I  now  beg  the  reader's  permission  to  relate 
briefly. 

In  1878  Harvard  University  rewarded  me  for  my 
hard  work  in  the  philosophical  department  (under 
Professors  Bo  wen  and  Palmer)  by  giving  me  the  Har- 
ris Fellowship,  which  enabled  me  to  continue  my  study 
of  physiological  and  comparative  psychology  for  three 
years  at  the  universities  of  Germany. 

I  recall  vividly  my  boyish  delight  in  the  pleasures  of 


6o  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

the  senses  of  sight,  hearing,  and  smell.  During  my 
college  course  and  afterwards  I  diligently  studied  the 
phenomena  of  these  senses  in  man  and  animals  in  all 
the  books  and  scientific  papers  I  could  find;  and  thus 
it  came  about  that  my  first  magazine  articles  were  on 
the  ^Esthetic  Value  of  Odors,  and  The  Development 
of  the  Color  Sense.  The  first  of  these  was  accepted 
by  W.  D.  Howells,  for  the  "Atlantic  Monthly"  (De- 
cember, 1880)  ;  the  second,  by  Alfred  Russell  Wallace, 
for  "Macmillan's  Magazine"  (London,  December, 
1879).  I  mention  these  things  to  show  that  the  senses 
of  man  and  animals  have  been  a  subject  of  special  inter- 
est with  me  for  more  than  four  decades,  and  that  when 
I  went  to  Germany,  I  took  up  the  study  of  them  not  as 
an  amateur  but  as  one  prepared  (as  well  as  eager)  to 
make  original  researches. 

My  most  ardent  desire  was  to  work  in  the  labora- 
tories of  the  University  of  Berlin  under  Professor 
Helmholtz,  whose  monumental  books  on  the  sensations 
of  tone  and  on  the  phenomena  of  sight  had  revealed  so 
many  secrets  to  the  world  of  science.  Unfortunately 
he  was  not  lecturing  on  those  subjects  at  that  time. 
Moreover,  reperusal  of  his  books  made  me  feel  as  if 
he  had  covered  all  the  most  interesting  ground.  I 
therefore  looked  about  for  a  region  in  which  I  could 
do  some  exploring  on  my  own  account,  and  soon  found 
it  in  the  functions  of  the  senses  of  smell  and  taste. 

Concerning  these  two  senses,  the  most  absurdly  in- 


AN     AMAZING    BLUNDER       61 

correct  notions  were  current  at  that  time  even  among 
leaders  in  science.  Grant  Allen,  known  as  "the  St. 
Paul  t)f  Darwinism,"  voiced  the  current  biological 
opinion  when  he  wrote  that  with  man  "smell  survives 
with  difficulty  as  an  almost  functionless  relic";  and 
Darwin  himself  wrote  that  this  sense  is  "of  extremely 
slight  service"  to  man. 

The  king  of  German  philosophers,  Kant,  who  was  an 
epicure,  maintained  that  smell  is  the  least  important 
of  our  senses,  and  that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  culti- 
vate it.  Nay,  the  king  of  epicures,  Brillat-Savarin, 
wrote  a  famous  book  the  very  title  of  which,  "Phj^si- 
ology  of  Taste,"  is  a  scientific  blunder.  Like  every- 
body else,  he  believed  in  the  existence  of  an  infinite 
variety  of  tastes,  and  never  suspected  that,  with  the  ex^ 
ception  of  sweety  soiir^  salt  and  bitter^  all  our  countless 
gastronomic  delights  come  to  us  through  the  sense  of 
smell. 

A    NEW    PSYCHOLOGY    OF    EATING. 

The  French  physiologist  Longet  and  the  German 
anatomist  Henle  were,  so  far  as  I  could  find,  the  only 
experts  who  had  an  inkling  of  the  gastronomic  impor- 
tance of  the  sense  of  smell;  but  they  did  not  go  so 
far  as  to  formulate  the  theory  I  have  just  expressed  in 
italics.  My  experiments  showed  me  that  not  only  is 
it  impossible,  with  the  nose  clasped  (or  closed  by  a 
cold),  to  tell  the  difference  between  various  kinds  of 
meats,  or  cheeses,  or  cakes,  or  vegetables,  but  also — 


62  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

which  no  one  had  ever  pointed  out — that  even  in  the 
case  of  sweet  and  sour  substances  which  do  gratify  the 
palate,  the  sense  of  smell  is  much  more  important  than 
the  sense  of  taste. 

Vinegar,  for  example,  is  absolutely  uninteresting  un- 
less it  has  a  "bouquet" — the  aroma  of  the  cider,  wine, 
or  malt  of  which  it  is  made.  And  why  is  it  that  we 
are  willing  to  pay  from  five  to  twenty  times  as  much  for 
candy  as  for  plain  sugar  ^  Because  the  sugar  appeals 
only  to  the  taste,  whereas  the  candy  is  usually  per- 
fumed with  the  aroma  of  sarsparilla,  wintergreen, 
vanilla,  chocolate,  and  a  hundred  other  flavoring  in- 
gredients the  fragrance  of  which  we  enjoy  by  exhal- 
ing through  the  nose  while  eating  it. 

The  emphasis  lies  on  the  word  exhaling.  It  is  con- 
sidered a  breach  of  etiquette  to  smell  of  things  at  the 
table  in  the  ordinary  way,  because  it  implies  a  doubt 
as  to  the  freshness  of  the  food.  But  there  is  a  second 
way  of  smelling  of  which  most  persons  are  uncon- 
scious, although  they  practise  it  daily.  Anatomy 
shows  that  only  a  small  portion  of  the  mucous  mem- 
brane which  lines  the  nostrils  is  the  seat  of  the  endings 
of  the  nerves  of  smell.  In  ordinary  expiration  the  air 
does  not  touch  this  olfactory  region.  But  when  we  eat 
in  the  right  way  we  unconsciously  guide  the  air  impreg- 
nated with  the  Flavors  of  the  food  we  are  munching, 
into  that  region,  and  that  is  the  way  we  enjoy  our 
food.     We  do  this  unconsciously,  I  say;  but  now  try 


IMPORTANCE    OF     FLAVOR      63 

and  do  it  consciously,  guiding  the  expired  air  very 
slowly  through  the  nose,  and  your  enjoyment  of  a 
meal  will  be  quintupled. 

Obviously  Kant  made  the  mistake  of  his  life  when 
he  said  the  sense  of  smell  was  not  worth  cultivating. 
It  not  only  provides  us  with  additional  table  pleasures, 
the  hygienic  and  tonic  value  of  which  has  been  suffi- 
ciently dwelt  upon,  but  it  is  a  fact  of  unspeakable  im- 
portance that  the  more  we  educate  the  nose,  the  more 
discriminating  we  make  it,  and  the  more  stubbornly 
therefore  we  insist  on  having  wholesome  food  only. 

This  new  psychology  of  eating  I  set  forth  for  the 
first  time  in  the  "Contemporary  Review"  (London,  No- 
vember, 1888),  under  the  title  of  "The  Gastronomic 
Value  of  Odors."  It  was  commented  on  as  a  psy- 
chological curiosity,  but  otherwise  attracted  little  at- 
tention. At  that  time  there  was  not  the  same  gen- 
eral interest  that  there  is  now  in  the  food  question. 
Even  Gladstone's  directions  regarding  eating  were 
more  frequently  smiled  at  than  followed. 

Since  his  day  many  things  have  happened  to  give 
the  food  question  an  aspect  of  superlative  importance, 
particularly  the  wholesale  adulterations  described  in 
the  preceding  pages.  That  among  those  who  have 
helped  to  ^waken  the  public  to  a  realizing  sense  of 
the  importance  of  this  subject  no  one  deserves  more 
credit  than  Mr.  Fletcher — who  has  been  immortalized 
in  the  dictionaries  by  the  inclusion  of  the  verb  "to 


64  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

Fletcherize" — ^has  been  stated  before.  So  beneficent, 
on  the  whole,  has  been  his  influence  that  I  hesitate  to 
point  out  any  of  his  mistakes;  but  as  some  of  them 
obscure  the  truth,  I  will  do  so. 

He  first  made  public  his  views,  in  a  crude  form, 
eleven  years  after  the  appearance  of  my  article  on  the 
gastronomic  value  of  odors.  That  article  anticipates 
some  important  details  of  his  doctrines,  but  he  evi- 
dently never  saw  it,  because  in  his  books  he  makes  only 
one  brief  reference  to  the  sense  of  smell  and  perpetuates 
all  the  old  errors  regarding  that  insolent  pretender,  the 
sense  of  taste.  This  is  to  be  regretted,  for  it  left  his 
followers  groping  in  the  dark  as  to  the  best  way  of 
getting  the  most  pleasure  and  benefit  out  of  their  food, 
at  home  and  at  their  "munching  parties." 

There  is  one  detail  of  Fletcherism  which  every  epi- 
cure will  fight  with  his  last  drop  of  ink.  If  we  all 
followed  his  example,  living  on  griddle  cakes,  butter, 
and  syrup  (at  a  cost  of  eleven  cents  a  day),  or  some 
other  equally  simple  menu,  as  he  advises,  what  would 
become  of  that  delectable  variety  which  is  the  spice 
of  gastronomy,  and  what  of  the  farmers,  and  the  hun- 
dreds of  industries  which  supply  this  variety? 

True  gastronomic  progress,  I  maintain,  lies  in  the 
direction  of  multiplying  the  pleasures  of  the  table — 
an  important  phase  of  our  subject  which  will  be  dis- 
cussed in  a  later  chapter. 

We  must  now  turn  the  limelight  once  more  on  Un- 
gastronomic  America. 


Ill 


OUR  DENATURED  FOODS 

EARING  in  mind  the  superlative  im- 
portance to  our  well-being  of  Flavor  in 
the  food  we  eat,  the  reader  is  now  in  a 
position  to  appreciate  the  full  force  of  a 
third  indictment  to  be  brought  against 
those  who  spoil  our  food.  The  first  indictment  was 
that  they  use  chemical  preservatives  which  arrest  di- 
gestion and  often  act  as  cumulative  poisons;  the  sec- 
ond, that  they  use  chemicals  which  enable  unscrupu- 
lous persons  to  sell  foods  made  of  nauseating  and  dan- 
gerous raw  material,  so  disguised  as  to  fool  the  buyer. 
The  culprits  now  to  be  arraigned  are  those  who, 
from  ignorance,  indolence,  or  greed  to  get  rich  quick, 
adopt  devices  which  spoil  the  Flavor  of  our  food  and 
thus  destroy  our  appetite  and  undermine  the  health  of 
the  community. 

Denatured  is  the  word  used  for  alcohol  that  has 
been  made  unfit  to  drink  by  the  addition  of  chemi- 

6$ 


66  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

cals,  and  denatured  is  hardly  too  strong  a  word  to  ap- 
ply to  many  if  not  most  of  the  foods  offered  in  the 
American  markets  and  stores,  the  offense  being  ag- 
gravated by  the  fact  that  the  prices  usually  asked  for 
these  are  quite  as  high  as  those  asked  for  foods  pre- 
served by  the  wholesome  old  condimental  methods, 
although  the  cost  to  the  maker  is  only  a  fraction  of 
what  it  would  be  if  those  methods  were  followed. 

Palatable,  appetizing  smoked  bacon  and  hams  are  still 
to  be  found  in  our  markets  by  those  who  know  a  thing 
or  two,  and  sternly  insist  on  getting  what  they  ask 
for;  but  for  the  vast  majority  of  consumers  smoked 
meats  have  disappeared.  Meats  lose  weight — up  to  20 
per  cent. — during  the  process  of  smoking,  and  there- 
fore bring  the  dealer  less  profit.  What  he  offers  is 
usually  denatured — unappetizing  and  indigestible. 
The  same  holds  true  of  smoked  fish,  which  used  to 
make  an  epicure's  mouth  water.  Why  it  does  so  no 
longer  is  shown  by  the  following  paragraphs  from 
Philadelphia,  printed  in  the  New  York  "Evening 
Post" : 

Fish  Was  Dyed,  not  Smoked 

The  dairy  and  food,  bureau  of  the  State  Agricultural  De- 
partment has  discovered  that  a  large  number  of  delicatessen 
and  other  stores  of  this  city  have  been  for  a  long  time  selling 
"dyed"  fish  as  a  substitute  for  smoked  fish.  When  Harry  P. 
Cassidy,  the  agent  of  the  bureau  told  the  retail  store  proprietors 
what  they  were  doing,  they  were  surprised,  as  they  had  pur- 
chased the  stuff  as  genuine  smoked  fish. 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     67 

Cassidy's  attention  to  the  food  article  was  attracted  by  its 
rich  red  color.  Purchasing  some,  he  had  it  examined,  and  the 
expert  reported  that  he  could  dye  wool  with  the  coloring  matter 
extracted  from  it.  In  smoking  fish  there  is  a  loss  of  fifteen 
pounds  to  every  hundred,  it  is  said,  but  in  dyeing  there  is  no 
loss  at  all.  This  permitted  the  violators  of  the  law  to  undersell 
their  competitors  in  the  smoked  fish  industry. 


Nor  is  our  fresh  fish  usually  more  palatable.  New 
York,  for  instance,  ought  to  be  a  paradise  of  fish  eaters, 
yet  how  seldom  is  it  served  in  prime  condition,  even 
in  leading  restaurants!  In  Germany  they  have  vari- 
ous ways  of  bringing  fish  to  market  alive,  even  in  in- 
terior towns;  over  here  they  are  kept  in  cold  storage 
for  weeks,  months — indeed  years,  although  fish  deteri- 
orates by  this  process  much  more  rapidly  than  even 
poultry — of  which  more  anon;  and  everybody  knows 
that  the  poorest  kind  of  fish  just  out  of  the  water  is 
better  than  the  best  kind  after  it  has  been  out  a  day 
or  two. 

Were  we  a  gastronomic  nation  we  would  rise  in  re- 
volt against  the  wholesale  denaturing  of  our  food  to 
be  presently  described  in  more  detail.  We  should  in- 
sist on  always  having  real  French  or  German-style 
bread,  with  crisp,  tasty  crust,  refusing  the  soggy  loaves 
made  of  bleached,  bolted  flour  robbed  of  its  nutri- 
tious phosphates  and  sources  of  Flavor;  refusing  also 
the  machine-polished  rice  deprived  of  its  nutritious 
outer  parts,  in  which  lies  the  delicate  Flavor  of  this 


68  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

cereal,  leaving  it  pretty  to  look  at,  but,  as  one  of  the 
Government's  agricultural  experts,  David  Fairchild, 
has  forcibly  expressed  it,  "as  tasteless  as  the  paste 
that  a  paper-hanger  brushes  on  his  rolls  of  wall- 
paper." 

We  should  exclude  the  chemically  greened  teas 
dumped  into  our  groceries  because  they  are  not  wanted 
in  any  other  country.  We  should  protest  against  the 
peaches  and  pears  and  other  fruits  formerly  brought 
into  our  markets  soft,  sun-ripened,  luscious,  but  now 
offered  to  us  hard,  unripe,  flavorless. 

The  melancholy  list  of  gastronomic  misdeeds  might 
be  prolonged  indefinitely. 

In  all  these  cases,  let  me  emphasize  this  fact  once 
more,  that  what  is  eliminated  from  the  food  is  its  very 
soul,  its  precious  Flavor,  which  makes  it  appetiz- 
ing and  enjoyable  and  therefore  digestible.  We  al- 
low covetous  or  ignorant  manufacturers  as  well  as 
incompetent  or  indolent  cooks  to  spoil  our  naturally 
good  food  because  we  do  not  as  a  nation,  realize  that 
on  its  pleasurableness  depend  our  health  and  comfort, 
our  happiness  and  capacity  for  hard  work,  more  than 
perhaps  on  anything  else — a  point  which  cannot  be 
emphasized  too  often. 

Now  for  a  few  details,  beginning  with  the  treat- 
ment to  which  our  poultry  is  subjected,  which  has 
long  been  a  national  calamity  and  a  scandal  of  the 
first  order. 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     69 

FOUL    FOWL. 

Perhaps  more  than  anything  else,  what  makes  us 
stand  before  the  world  as  a  deplorably  ungastronomic 
nation  is  our  tolerance  of  the  tainted,  unpalatable,  cold- 
storage  poultry  served  in  public  eating  places  as  well 
as  in  private  houses  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten. 

We  spent  the  months  of  May  to  September,  1912, 
in  Europe,  traveling  in  France,  Switzerland,  Italy, 
Germany,  and  England.  Nearly  every  day  we  ate 
chicken,  or  some  other  kind  of  poultry  and  not  once  did 
we  have  any  that  was  in  the  least  like  our  cold-storage 
fowls;  everything  was  fresh,  sweet,  juicy,  and  appetiz- 
ing. Again  and  again  I  said  to  my  wife,  or  she  to  me : 
"I  wish  we  could  get  such  chicken  in  New  York !" 

An  American  lady  of  wealth  said  to  me  a  few  years 
ago  that  one  of  the  reasons  why  she  went  to  Europe 
every  summer  was  that  she  liked  good  things  to  eat 
and  could  get  them  so  much  more  easily  and  regularly 
abroad — particularly  butter,  and  her  favorite  dish, 
chicken.  She  knew  of  the  poulet  de  Bresse — that  ex- 
plained it  all.  I  shall  never  forget,  though  I  live  an- 
other half-century,  my  first  taste  of  that  particular 
brand  of  fowl.  I  had  arrived  at  one  of  the  leading 
Paris  hotels  too  late  for  the  table  d'hote,  and  think- 
ing I  was  not  hungry,  ordered  nothing  but  a  portion 
of  chicken  and  a  bowl  of  salad.  The  waiter  brought 
an  enormous  portion,  and  I  had  hardly  tasted  it  when 


70  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

I  found  I  was  ravenously  hungry.     Not  a  shred  of  it 
was  left. 

The  delicious  taste  of  that  sort  of  fancy  poultry  is 
due  in  part  to  the  particular  breed,  but  more  still  to 
the  use  of  special  kinds  of  food  which  give  a  rich  and 
delicate  flavor  to  the  flesh,  as  the  so-called  wild  celery 
of  the  Chesapeake  Bay  does  in  the  case  of  our  best 
ducks  and  turtles. 

Nature  provides  our  canvasback  and  redhead  ducks 
and  terrapin — not  too  bountifully,  it  is  true — but  when 
it  comes  to  mortal  man's  treatment,  in  this  country, 
of  the  poultry  that  has  to  take  the  place  of  the  formerly 
abundant  game,  what  do  we  see*?  A  state  of  affairs 
that  would  not  be  tolerated  one  week  on  the  European 
continent. 

It  is  officially  estimated  that  from  75  to  90  per  cent. 
of  all  the  poultry  produced  in  the  United  States  is 
preserved  in  cold  storage  for  months,  often  for  years. 
What  is  worse  still,  "only  a  very  small  percentage  of 
the  fowls  which  are  placed  in  cold  storage  are  drawn^^^ 
the  result  being  that  by  a  physiological  process  known 
as  osmosis  the  meat  becomes  tainted  in  a  most  of- 
fensive manner.  The  warehouse  men  and  dealers  have 
for  years  been  fighting  furiously  against  the  health 
boards  of  various  cities  and  states  for  the  privilege  of 
perpetuating  this  state  of  affairs,  which  greatly  simpli- 
fies the  poultry  business  and  enables  them  to  sell  the 
entrails  of  a  fowl  at  the  same  price  per  pound  as  the 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     71 

meat;  but  the  long-suffering  public  has  at  last  become 
thoroughly  aroused,  convinced  that  many  obscure  dis- 
orders of  the  digestive  tract  are  due  to  the  consumption 
of  undrawn  and  other  cold-storage  poultry,  not  to 
speak  of  the  horror  of  eating  such  stuff. 

A  young  woman  informs  me  that  one  day  she  went 
into  a  butcher's  shop  (in  a  part  of  town  where  pros- 
perous families  live)  and  ordered  a  chicken.  The 
butcher  took  one  down,  but  when  he  cut  it  open  such 
a  stench  came  from  it  that  she  stepped  back  in  horror. 
Yet  the  man  tried  to  persuade  her  to  take  it,  remark- 
ing: "That's  all  right!  Just  wash  it  in  a  solution  of 
borax,  or  in  vinegar  and  water  and  the  odor  will  disap- 
pear." 

This  happened  in  New  York  City  in  the  year  1912; 
it  was  not  an  exceptional  case;  thousands  of  such  of- 
fensive carcasses  are  sold  in  American  cities  daily. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  to  cut  them  open  to  know  that  they 
are  unfit  for  food.  Their  greenish,  mummified,  rigid 
appearance  reveals  their  unpalatable  condition. 
Daily,  for  years,  as  I  have  walked  along  the  streets  of 
New  York  and  seen  these  hideous  bird  corpses  brazenly 
exposed  for  sale,  I  have  wondered  at  a  community 
which  will  tolerate  such  a  thing.  As  the  authors  of  Bul- 
letin No.  1 1 5  of  the  Bureau  of  Chemistry  *  say,  a  care- 

1  "A   Preliminary    Study   of   the    Effects   of    Cold    Storage   on  Eggs, 

Quail,  and  Chickens,"  by  H.  W.  Wiley,  with  the  collaboration  of  M. 

E.  Pennington,  G.  W.  Styles,  Jr.,  B.  J.  Howard,  and  F.  C.  Cook. 
Washington,  1908. 


72  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

ful  inspection  of  cold-storage  fowls  before  cooking 
"would  do  much  to  destroy  any  appetite  which  might 
otherwise  have  been  manifested  for  these  birds  when 
cooked." 

On  pages  loo-ioi  of  his  monumental  work  on 
foods  and  their  adulteration  which  should  be  read  by 
all  consumers  as  well  as  dealers  because  of  its  impar- 
tial statement  of  the  case,  Dr.  Wiley  remarks  perti- 
nently that  "the  keeping  of  chickens  with  the  intestinal 
contents  undisturbed  does  not  appeal  to  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  consumer  any  more  than  would  the  freez- 
ing of  the  carcass  of  a  beef  or  hog  with  the  viscera  re- 
maining in  it." 

Elsewhere  the  great  reformer  put  his  finger  on  the 
most  vulnerable  and  undeniable  aspect  of  the  storage 
business:  "Palatability  is  one  of  the  elements  of 
wholesomeness,  and  we  find  in  cold  storage  a  tremen- 
dous decrease  in  palatahilityr 

From  this  kind  of  tainted,  unappetizing,  unpalatable 
chicken  to  the  poulet  de  Bresse,  what  a  long  road  we 
have  to  travel.  Under  present  conditions,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  it  makes  no  difference  what  we  feed  our 
fowls;  all  are  foul  alike,  and  will  remain  so  as  long  as 
the  American  public  remains  content  to  fall  so  far  be- 
low the  European  gastronomic  level. 

The  packers  and  dealers,  of  course,  laugh  at  Dr. 
Wiley's  statement  that,  under  the  present  scientific 
methods  of  production,  poultry  can  be  furnished  in  a 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     73 

fresh  state  all  the  year  round  (as  it  is  in  Europe). 
They  do  not  want  it  fresh;  they  want  it  in  their  re- 
frigerators so  they  can  regulate  and  artificially 
raise  prices.  The  worst  offenders  are  the  men  who 
speculate  in  storage  fowls,  making,  say,  $10,000  or 
$20,000  in  one  day.  That  enables  them  to  cross  the 
Atlantic  and  eat  edible  chicken  in  Paris. 

The  simplest  way  for  the  consumer  to  thwart  the 
conspirators  against  his  appetite  and  stomach  is  to  buy 
of  genuinely  Kosher  butchers,  who  by  their  tenets  are 
not  allowed  to  handle  cold-storage  fowls;  or  direct  of 
the  farmer,  with  whom  an  arrangement  can  be  made 
to  send  the  freshly  killed  and  promptly  cleaned  poultry 
to  one's  home.  In  this  way  the  total  cost  does  not  ex- 
ceed regular  city  prices,  and  oh !  the  difference  in  the  ef- 
fect on  our  well-being,  not  to  speak  of  getting  even  with 
the  "icemen." 

The  introduction  of  parcel's  post  greatly  reduced 
the  cost  of  this  method  of  securing  fresh  poultry. 
In  European  countries,  particularly  France  and  Ger- 
many, the  parcel's  post  has  done  much  to  eliminate 
middlemen,  and  many  thousands  of  consumers  make 
use  of  this  chance  to  get  provisions  fresh  and  direct 
from  the  producer. 

There  are  reasons  to  believe  that  the  present  high 
prices  of  beef  and  mutton  will  never  come  down  again, 
but  will  climb  higher  still  because  the  former  vast  graz- 
ing-grounds  of  the  West  are  being  cut  up  into  farms. 


74  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

But  to  the  raising  of  chickens  there  is  no  limit.  By 
applying  the  methods  of  intensive  farming  the  supply 
can  be  steadily  increased  and  prices  lowered.  Chicken 
day  is  destined  to  become  more  and  more  frequent,  and 
it  is  for  the  consumer  to  decide  whether  his  chicken 
dinner  shall  be  appetizing,  enjoyable,  and  beneficial, 
or  remain  what  it  is  now  in  most  cases,  a  gastronomic 
calamity. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  Flavor,  which  is  the  main 
theme  of  the  present  volume,  this  subject  is  of  such 
importance  that  a  few  more  pages  must  be  devoted  to 
it. 

THE    FRENCH    WAY    VERSUS    THE    AMERICAN. 

In  Paris  one  eats  the  best  chicken  in  the  world;  in 
New  York,  as  a  rule,  the  worst.  How  do  they  do  it 
in  France?  The  answer  will  be  given  in  the  chapter 
on  French  Gastronomic  Supremacy;  here  let  us  antici- 
pate only  a  few  details  as  supplied  to  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  by  Newton  B.  Ashby,  special 
agent  of  the  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry  and  published 
in  its  Sixteenth  Annual  Report  (1899). 

The  French,  he  notes,  "are  economic  people,  and  the 
system  of  sending  young  and  immature  chickens  to 
market  is  not  practised.  The  fowls  sent  to  market 
are  from  4  to  8  months  old.  They  are  carefully  fed 
and  grown  for  market  instead  of  being  allowed  to 
scavenge.     For  instance,  the  chickens  are  given  clean 


OUR    DENATURED     FOODS     75 

water  instead  of  being  allowed  the  run  of  filthy  pools 
and  puddles." 

The  method  of  slaughter,  he  goes  on  to  say,  "seems 
to  be  chiefly  by  cutting  the  jugular  vein.     The  fowl 


1    •, 


wLM^y 


How  they  do  it  in  France? 

is  then  dry  plucked  very  carefully  to  prevent  tearing 
the  flesh,  and  is  drawn  through  the  vent." 

Note  those  last  six  words.  They  show  that  the 
French  do  not  allow  chickens  to  remain  undrawn  even 
one  day;  for,  as  Mr.  Ashby  continues,  "the  fowls  are 
packed  the  afternoon  or  evening  of  the  day  of 
slaughter,  and  despatched  to  Paris  by  special  express 
train  that  night.  They  are  due  in  Paris  before  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  They  are  delivered  at  once 
to  the  market,  and  are  sold  on  the  day  of  arrival,  so 


76  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

that  French  fowls  are  generally  disposed  of  in  the 
market  within  twenty  to  twenty-four  hours  after 
being  killed.  ...  In  July  and  August  many 
French  fowls  come  to  the  market  alive." 

"The  Paris  markets,  and  French  markets  generally," 
we  are  further  told,  "do  not  take  kindly  to  foreign 
poultry  or  meat."  Such  poultry  would  of  course  have 
to  be  brought  in  cold  storage,  and  what  the  nation 
which  knows  most  about  eating  wants  is  fresh  chicken. 
"Foreign  poultry  is  not  in  demand  in  Paris,"  because 
the  French  know  and  have  known  for  generations  that 
to  freeze  meat  is  to  spoil  it.  On  this  subject  I  shall 
have  some  further  remarks  in  a  later  section  on  the 
Roast  Beef  of  Old  England. 

Now  look  at  the  way  much  of  the  poultry  consumed  in 
American  cities  Is  gathered.  Dr.  Cavana  of  Oneida,  N.  Y., 
who  found  no  fewer  than  eleven  distinct  groups  of  bacteria 
in  the  flesh  of  a  single  undrawn  fowl,  remarked.  In  a  lecture 
delivered  In  1906,  at  the  Annual  Convention  of  Railway 
Surgeons,  that  poultry  stocks  are  collected  for  eastern  cities 
from  all  parts  of  the  country.  He  goes  on  to  say  that 
after  slaughter  the  feathers  are  removed  and  the  carcasses 
packed  In  barrels,  generally  without  further  dressing.  The 
head,  feet,  and  legs,  as  well  as  the  craw  of  partially  digested  food, 
therefore,  Is  left  In  the  sealed  cavities  of  the  fowls,  forming  con- 
ditions which  force  the  general  Infection  of  the  tissues  by  the 
flagellated,  or  rapidly  swimming  Intestinal  bacteria,  which  double 
their  quantity  and  numbers  every  forty  minutes,  a  single  bacillus 
being  capable  of  developing  over  forty-two  billion  germs  In 
twenty-four   hours.     Their   shipments  are   made   by   rail   and 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     77 

steamship,  and  cover  transit  periods  of  several  days  before  reach- 
ing the  cold  atmospheres  of  the  storage  w^arehouses. 

"To  determine  the  activity  of  these  germs  and  the  period  re- 
quired for  their  permeation  of  the  tissues  in  the  slaughtered 
undraw^n  fow^l,  we  caused  to  be  made  a  series  of  experiments, 
the  results  of  which  justify  the  belief  that  a  great  percentage 
of  the  infected  poultry  and  game  stock  in  storage  became  so 
infected  before  reaching  the  lov^r  temperature  of  the  storage 
warehouses." 

Nor  does  ordinary  cold  storage  destroy  the  noisome 
bacteria.  They  are  merely  scotched,  to  revive  and 
multiply  at  the  first  opportunity. 

One  of  the  principal  objections  to  cold-storage 
poultry  is  that  after  being  taken  from  the  storehouse 
they  decompose  much  more  quickly  than  fresh  birds. 

Some  dealers  aggravate  the  evil  by  soaking  the 
poultry  when  taken  out  of  storage  in  cold  water  for 
the  purpose  of  thawing.  This  adds  to  its  weight,  to 
the  profit  of  the  dealer,  but  it  "causes  heavy  bacterial 
infection,"  as  Dr.  Charles  Harrington,  secretary  of 
the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Health,  has  pointed  out. 
Dr.  Pennington,  in  an  article  on  Changes  in  Chickens 
in  Cold  Storage,  to  which  we  shall  recur,  refers  to  a 
case  in  which  a  frozen  fowl,  after  being  immersed  in 
water,  had  increased  in  weight  eleven  per  cent,  (to 
the  dealer's  profit). 

In  Bulletin  144  of  the  United  States  Department  of 
Agriculture  we  read: 


78  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

"Under  precisely  the  same  conditions  of  temperature  and 
humidity,  drawn  fowls  will  keep  from  twenty  to  thirty  days 
longer  than  those  not  drawn.  The  presence  of  undigested  food 
and  of  excrementitlous  substances  in  animals  which  have  been 
killed  most  certainly  favors  the  tainting  of  the  flesh  and  gen- 
eral decomposition.  The  viscera  are  the  first  parts  to  shov7 
putrescence,  and  allowing  these  to  remain  within  the  body  can- 
not do  otherwise  than  favor  infection  of  the  flesh  with  bacteria 
and  ptomaines,  even  If  osmosis  does  not  actually  carry  putrid 
juices  to  contiguous  tissues.  Hunters  know  the  value  of  draw- 
ing birds  as  soon  as  possible  after  they  have  been  shot,  in  order 
to  keep  them  fresh  and  sweet  and  to  prevent  their  having  a 
strong  intestinal  flavor." 

Read  also  the  following  weighty  remarks  reprinted 
from  Senate  Report  No.  1991,  March  22,  1906: 

The  process  of  decomposition  and  putrefaction  begins  at  once 
after  the  death  of  the  animal.  Cold  storage  and  freezing  may 
limit  the  rotting  process,  but  do  not  entirely  stop  It.  When 
poultry  or  animals  are  taken  from  cold  storage  and  are  thawed 
out  for  exhibition  and  sale,  the  decomposition  continues  with 
marked  energy,  Impregnating  the  flesh  with  poisons — and  this 
decomposition  Is  exceedingly  rapid  even  when  the  poultry  is 
kept  in  the  market  or  grocery  refrigerator,  the  temperature  of 
which  is  much  higher  than  that  of  the  cold-storage  warehouse. 
Flesh  in  which  the  blood  has  been  permitted  to  remain  is  partic- 
ularly susceptible  to  such  decomposition,  and  this  susceptibility 
is  increased  by  the  long  period  of  freezing  and  thawing. 

Even  with  poultry  which  Is  "freshly  killed"  there  Is  fre- 
quently a  period  of  several  days  between  the  time  of  slaughter- 
ing and  sale.  Not  only  is  it  dangerous,  but  it  is  repugnant  to 
our  sense  of  decency,  that  the  flesh  we  are  to  eat  shall  lie 
for  several  days  in  close  contact  with  putrefying  animal  matter. 

Undoubtedly  undrawn  poultry,  fish,  and  game  have  caused 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     79 

many  cases  of  poisoning  which  have  been  wrongfully  attributed 
to  other  sources.  The  poisoning  resulting  often  resembles  that 
caused  by  other  poisons  administered  by  persons  or  taken  with 
suicidal  Intent.  Many  sufferers  from  digestive  troubles — head- 
ache, nausea,  colic,  and  diarrhea  after  eating,  owe  their  ail- 
ments to  tainted  foods. 

We  are  advised  that  the  reason  for  slaughtering  poultry  with- 
out thorough  bleeding  Is  the  saving  In  the  weight  of  the  fowl, 
and  this  reason  Is  doubtless  also  one  for  the  storing  of  poultry 
and  offering  It  for  sale  without  removing  the  viscera.  There 
is,  however,  no  reason  why  the  consumer  should  be  compelled 
to  purchase  a  large  percentage  of  excreta,  offal,  and  refuse  with 
his  poultry.  We  would  not  tolerate  the  addition  of  a  certain 
percentage  of  weight  In  the  form  of  entrails  of  the  steer  with 
each  beefsteak  we  buy.  The  consumer  purposes  to  buy  edible 
food  and  not  the  disgusting  waste  which  should  be  eliminated 
In  the  process  of  slaughtering  and  dressing.  It  Is  just  as  rea- 
sonable to  ask  the  consumer  to  buy  hogs,  calves,  and  lambs 
without  the  Intestines  removed  as  to  solicit  his  purchase  of  un- 
drawn turkeys  and  chickens. 

WHY    DO    WE    EAT    POULTRY^ 

After  the  appearance,  in  "The  Century  Magazine"  of 
November,  1911,  of  my  article  on  Ungastronomic 
America,  in  which  I  denounced  the  practice  of  offering 
the  public  undrawn,  cold-storage  poultry,  I  was  bom- 
barded with  abusive  letters  from  packers  and  others, 
and  a  periodical,  called  "The  Steward,"  fancied  that  it 
had  completely  demolished  me  by  quoting  the  results 
obtained  by  Dr.  Mary  E.  Pennington,  in  collaboration 
with  Evelyn  Witmer  and  H.  C.  Pierce,  during  a  series 
pf  observations  described  in  a  circular  entitled  "The 


8o  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

Comparative  Rate  of  Decomposition  in  Drawn  and 
Undrawn  Market  Poultry"  published  in  1911  by  the 
Department  of  Agriculture.  This  result  of  these  ob- 
servations was  that  "undrawn  poultry  decomposes  more 
slowly  than  does  poultry  which  has  been  either  wholly 
or  partially  eviscerated." 

This  statement  does  not  agree  with  the  conclusion 
reached  and  printed  in  the  Bulletin  No.  144  to  which 
I  have  already  referred,  that  "under  precisely  the  same 
conditions  of  temperature  and  humidity,  drawn  fowls 
will  keep  from  twenty  to  thirty  days  longer  than  those 
not  drawn." 

This  statement  is  doubtless  correct — provided  the 
fowls  have  been  eviscerated  in  such  a  way  as  to  keep 
the  cavity  absolutely  free  from  contamination.  If 
this  is  not  done,  the  drawn  fowl  will,  for  obvious 
reasons,  spoil  even  sooner  than  the  undrawn.  It  is  not 
usually  done  by  the  American  packers;  and  the  moral 
is,  not  that  undrawn  fowl  is  preferable  to  drawn  fowl 
for  packing,  but  that  these  packers  should  send  their 
men  to  France  or  Germany  to  learn  how  properly  to 
draw  fowls. 

The  consumer,  anyway,  is  not  interested  in  "keeping 
qualities."  What  he  wants  is  chicken  that  is  good 
to  eat,  and  the  shorter  a  time  it  has  been  kept,  the  better 
for  him,  in  every  way. 

Dr.  Wiley  refers  to  experiments  which  have  "shown 
the  advisability  of  packing  drawn  poultry  in  tin  car- 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     81 

tons,  carefully  closed";  adding  that  "fowls  thus  treated 
preserve  to  a  remarkable  degree  their  freshness  and 
palatability." 

If  that  degree  of  freshness  and  palatibilty  is  suffi- 
cient to  satisfy  the  consumer,  then  cold  storage  has  a 
future.  If  not,  cold  storage  is  doomed,  for  undrawn, 
frozen  poultry  will,  I  feel  sure,  not  be  eaten  much 
longer  by  the  American  public. 

Why  do  we  eat  poultry,  anyway?  Surely  not 
merely  because  we  want  food.  If  that  were  the  case, 
why  waste  money  on  expensive  chicken  or  turkey,  when 
we  could  get  the  same  amount  of  nourishment  from 
many  other  foods  at  a  mere  fraction  of  the  cost?  The 
reason  why  we  eat  chicken  in  preference  to  those  other 
foods  is  that  we  want  to  enjoy  its  flavor.  And  we  do 
not  want  frozen,  undrawn  poultry,  not  only  because 
the  freezing  spoils  the  flavor  but  because  the  leaving 
of  the  entrails  in  the  animal  makes  it  unwholesome. 

One  of  the  main  arguments  of  the  packers  in  favor 
of  leaving  fowls  undrawn  is  that  they  dry  out  sooner 
when  drawn.  A  more  deadly  boomerang  it  would  be 
difficult  to  throw.  There  is  only  one  way  in  which 
the  drying  carcass  of  a  fowl  can  get  its  moisture:  from 
the  contents  of  the  entrails.  That  is  what  is  meant 
by  osmosis.  Thus  out  of  their  own  mouths  the 
packers  stand  convicted  of  offering  the  public  fowl 
which  is  disgustingly  tainted. 

The  best  part  of  the  fowl — the  second  joint — gets 


82  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

the  taint  soonest,  because  it  lies  nearest  the  intestines. 
The  wings  and  drumsticks  get  it  last.  It  is  impor- 
tant to  know  this,  because  it  explains  why  experts  may 
differ  as  to  the  time  it  takes  to  spoil  the  flavor  of  a 
stored  bird.     Usually  the  process  is  quite  rapid. 

The  whole  question  of  the  tainting  of  meat  by  os- 
mosis deserves  much  more  attention  than  it  has  re- 
ceived. A  wild  boar  has  to  be  eviscerated  at  once  after 
being  killed.  If  this  is  not  done,  none  of  the  meat 
is  fit  to  eat  except  the  head — which  explains  why  "wild 
boar's  head,"  and  the  head  alone- — often  figures  on 
bills  of  fare  in  France  and  Germany.  My  wife,  who 
was  brought  up  in  Southern  France  knew  a  wealthy 
silk  merchant,  a  great  hunter  in  his  own  domains,  who 
always  promptly  removed  the  entrails  of  the  boars  he 
killed,  before  the  carcass  grew  cold,  the  consequence  be- 
ing that  all  the  meat  was  good  to  eat,  as  his  friends 
were  given  many  a  chance  to  find  out. 

For  several  years  some  of  the  New  York  butchers 
have  indulged  in  the  custom  of  exhibiting  in  their 
windows  the  carcasses  of  lambs  with  their  pelts  still 
on.  If  a  Paris  butcher  did  that,  the  first  of  his  cus- 
tomers coming  along  would  ask  him  if  he  didn't  know 
that  unless  the  pelt  is  taken  off  at  once  after  killing 
a  mouton^  the  meat  gets  from  it  a  disagreeable 
"sheepy"  flavor — which  is  a  very  different  thing  from 
the  unique  and  delicious  flavor  properly  dressed  mut- 
ton has. 


OUR    DENATURED     FOODS     83 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  illustration  of  the  rapid 
action  of  osmosis  is  provided  by  venison,  which  is  un- 
fit to  eat  if  the  deer  has  been  tortured  by  a  cruel  chase. 
Its  terror  affects  the  digestive  juices,  and  the  whole 
body  becomes  tainted. 

IS    COLD    STORAGE    A    BLESSING*? 

In  an  editorial  entitled  "Cold  Storage  Hardly  a 
Blessing"  the  New  York  "Times"  called  attention  dur- 
ing the  holiday  season  of  1911  to  the  fact  that  the  price 
of  cold-storage  turkeys  was  six  cents  a  pound  less 
than  that  of  the  fresh-killed  birds.  "This  difference  of 
almost  25  per  cent,  is  an  admission  by  the  cold-storage 
people,  forced  from  them  by  unalterable  public 
opinion,  that  their  much- wanted  wares  are  to  just 
about  that  extent  inferior  to  those  which  they  vocifer- 
ously declare  to  be  no  better." 

Quoting  the  happy  expression  that  cold-storage 
fowls  taste  "as  if  they  had  been  buried  and  dug  up 
again,"  the  same  writer  remarks:  "None  of  us  really 
knows  how  fowls  do  taste  after  they  have  gone  through 
that  process.  We  can  imagine  the  flavor,  however, 
and  do,  noses  helping  tongues." 

Were  it  not  for  the  storage  people,  chickens  and 
eggs  would  come  into  our  markets  fresh,  cheap,  and  in 
abundance  at  the  time  when  they  are  at  their  best.  But 
it  is  precisely  when  they  are  at  their  best  and  cheapest 
that  the  storage  men  corner  the  market  and  hold  the 


84  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

goods  till  they  are  good  no  more;  whereupon  they  sell 
them  at  their  own  prices,  largely  increased  through 
gambling.  In  view  of  such  facts  the  "Times"  refers 
to  cold  storage  as  "a  baleful  invention^" 

A  baleful  invention  it  certainly  is — and  a  needless 
one,  too.  To  quote  Dr.  Wiley  again:  "Poultry  is 
a  food  product  which  under  the  present  scientific 
methods  of  production  can  be  furnished  in  a  fresh 
state  all  the  year.  The  necessity  for  cold  storage, 
therefore,  is  not  so  apparent  in  this  case  as  in  that  of 
fruit  and  other  perishable  foods." 

The  American  public,  surely,  will  not  much  longer 
tolerate  the  present  condition  of  affairs.  There  are 
packer^  and  packers.  Some  are  more  careful  and 
cleanly  in  their  methods  than  others;  but  cold-storage 
fowl  at  its  best  is  more  or  less  denatured,  and  at  its 
worst  it  is  worse  than  denatured,  putting  us  almost  on 
a  level  with  the  African  Bushmen  who,  when  they  kill 
a  sheep,  eat  the  entrails  with  their  contents.  I  would 
no  more  eat  such  undrawn  storage  poultry  as  is  placed 
daily  before  thousands  of  my  countrymen  than  I  would 
the  flesh  of  a  hyena  or  a  vulture. 

It  was  estimated  that,  in  1912,  $75,000,000 
worth  of  poultry  was  consumed  in  New  York  City. 
Of  this,  only  $1,500,000  represented  the  business 
done  in  live  chickens,  and  nearly  all  of  this  went  to 
the  Kosher  butchers  of  the  East  Side.  Surely  Chris- 
tians cannot  afford  to  be  less  cleanly  than  Hebrews 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     85 

in    regard    to    what    they    put    in    their    stomachs. 

The  time  has  come  for  Christians  to  gird  up  their 
loins  and  fight  for  untainted  food  on  their  tables,  too. 
There  is  encouragement  in  the  information  that  in 
one  season  1,100  more  cars  of  live  poultry  were  shipped 
to  New  York  City  than  the  season  before  (1910),  and 
that  plants  were  being  established  near  the  city  for 
providing  poultry  freshly  slaughtered  and  dressed. 
The  consumer  must,  however,  make  sure  that  the  fowls 
are  not  only  freshly  killed  but  drawn  within  a  few 
days;  the  second  joint  is  sometimes  tainted  on  the 
second  day.  Butchers  and  poultry  dealers  would 
make  friends  if  they  gave  up  the  habit  of  charging  for 
fowl  at  so  much  a  pound  including  the  intestines.  Let 
them  charge  more  per  pound  for  the  meat  alone,  re- 
fusing under  any  conditions  to  have  an  undrawn  bird 
in  their  shops,  and  the  poultry  business  will  soon  be 
doubled,  nay,  quintupled. 

The  fact  that  fresh  fowl  costs  more  than  frozen  is 
due  to  artificial  conditions  which  can  be  remedied  and 
must  be  remedied.  For  the  present,  if  you  cannot  af- 
ford a  six-pound  fowl,  try  one  weighing  three  pounds. 
If  your  dealer  understands — as  mine  understands — 
that  you  will  not  under  any  circumstances  eat  a  cold- 
storage  bird  he  will  supply  a  fresh  one.  What  you 
want  is  not  quantity  but  quality — particularly  the 
true  chicken  Flavor.  In  the  chapter  on  Savory  Cook- 
ing it  will  be  shown  how  a  few  pounds  of  fresh  chicken 


86  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

can  be  made  to  yield  their  delicious  flavor  to  a  dish 
much  larger  and  much  cheaper  than  would  be  afforded 
by  a  fowl  double  its  size  cooked  in  the  usual  way. 

In  Europe,  most  persons  travel  third  class  on  the 
railways  because  they  cannot  afford  first  or  second. 
In  this  country,  nearly  everybody  can  afford  to  travel 
first  class.  Americans  are  always  bound  to  have  the 
best  of  everything — if  they  know  how  to  get  it.  Only 
in  the  gastronomic  world  are  they — with  the  exception 
of  the  Jews — traveling  third  class — eating  third-rate 
poultry  prepared  by  third-rate  cooks.  This  cannot 
last.     We  can  afford  the  best.     Let  us  have  it. 

SPOILING    THE    AMERICAN    OYSTER. 

Nowhere  in  the  world  are  oysters  more  abundant 
than  in  America.  Nowhere  are  they  cheaper  or  bet- 
ter. As  a  rule,  too,  we  cook  them  well,  in  various 
styles;  but  in  the  opinion  of  most  epicures  a  cooked 
oyster  is  an  oyster  spoiled.  Its  food  value  in  any 
case,  raw  or  cooked,  is  very  small,  and  it  is  chiefly  as 
a  relish  that  those  who  know  how  to  eat  value  it.  But 
for  years  the  public  has  been  allowing  the  men  who 
market  oysters  to  eliminate  the  very  elements  which 
give  them  relish  by  soaking  them  in  fresh  water,  which 
makes  them  bloated,  blonde,  and  tasteless. 

The  dealers  declare  that  many  consumers  demand 
them  that  way;  floating  makes  them  bigger.  There 
are  such  consumers;  they  sacrifice  quality  for  quantity; 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     87 

they  know  not  that  usually  the  best  oysters  by  far  are 
the  small  brunettes  straight  from  the  deep  sea;  and 
they  further  demonstrate  their  gastronomic  obtuseness 
by  smothering  their  oysters  under  several  strong  con- 
diments, which  in  themselves  would  destroy  their  deli- 
cate, natural  Flavor. 

In  some  of  our  States  the  government  has  come  to 
the  rescue  of  the  epicure — who  is  in  despair  at  this 
wholesale  denaturing  of  his  favorite  delicacy — by  en- 
acting laws  against  the  soaking  of  oysters  because  few 
of  the  streams  in  which  this  is  done  are  free  from 
typhoid  and  other  deadly  germs;  but  many  of  us  do 
not  feel  sure  that  the  health  boards  (because  of  in- 
dolence or  "graft")  exercise  the  necessary  supervision, 
and  therefore  we  deprive  ourselves  of  the  cheap  lux- 
ury which  Europeans  have  most  reason  to  envy  us.  At 
banquets,  where  everybody  used  to  eat  oysters  on  the 
half-shell,  it  is  noticeable  how  many  plates  the  waiters 
remove  that  have  not  been  touched. 

Having  thus  summed  up  the  indictment,  let  us  con- 
sider a  few  of  the  more  important  details. 

The  London  "Lancet"  of  April  22,  1911,  had  an 
editorial  article  on  Shell  Fish  and  Disease  in  which  it 
pointed  out  that  while  from  the  nature  of  the  case 
the  testimony  is  usually  of  a  very  circumstantial  kind, 
"which  only  becomes  convincing  in  its  cumulative  as- 
pects," there  are  instances  on  record  like  the  outbreaks 
following  certain  banquets  in  Southampton  and  Ports- 


88  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

mouth  which  admitted  of  no  doubt  as  to  the  source  of 
the  disease. 

Dr.  H.  T.  Bulstrode  made  a  comprehensive  report 
upon  enteric  fever  and  gastro-enteritis  in  England 
to  the  Local  Government  Board  of  London,  in  1906, 
in  which  he  showed  by  means  of  maps  how  many  of 
the  mussel,  oyster,  and  cockle  beds  were  exposed  to 
contamination,  his  revelations  being,  as  the  "Lancet" 
remarks,  "decidedly  disquieting."  Even  in  cases  where 
the  shell-fish  were  collected  from  locations  relatively 
remote  from  contamination  by  sewage  they  were  likely 
to  be  "brought  back  and  cleansed  on  shore  much  too 
near  the  mouths  of  sewers."  England  is  thus  in  the 
same  predicament  as  the  United  States,  but  that  is 
small  comfort  for  us. 

In  an  address  before  the  New  York  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences delivered  by  Dr.  George  A.  Soper,  President  of  the 
Metropolitan  Sewerage  Commission  and  reported  in 
the  "Times"  of  March  14,  191 1,  it  was  pointed  out  that 
there  are  over  500  sewer  outlets  discharging  into  the 
rivers  and  harbor  of  New  York  each  day  a  volume 
of  sewage  that  would  fill  the  channel  of  the  East  River 
from  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  to  a  distance  of  fifteen 
miles.  "New  York  gets  many  of  its  oysters  from 
Jamaica  Bay — about  a  million  bushels  a  year.  The 
water  at  this  section  is  heavily  polluted,  and  to  this 
can  no  doubt  be  traced  a  great  part  of  the  typhoid 
that  breaks  out  in  this  city.     The  Board  of  Health 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     89 

has  found  that  15  per  cent,  of  all  typhoid  is  due  to 
the  eating  of  polluted  shell  fish." 

James  L.  Kellogg,  professor  of  biology  in  Wil- 
liams College,  in  his  admirable  book  on  Shell  Fish 
Industries  ^  sums  up  the  results  of  his  thorough  study 
of  this  subject  in  a  chapter  on  Bivalves  in  Relation  to 
Disease.  It  may  be  stated  as  a  fact,  he  says,  that 
"epidemics  are  sometimes  caused  by  eating  uncooked 
oysters.  Several  times  they  have  been  traced  directly 
to  that  source.  The  evidence  collected  on  that  point 
in  this  country  and  abroad  is  conclusive." 

There  are  four  reasons  for  objecting  to  the  process 
of  "floating"  oysters.  The  first — the  danger  of  con- 
veying a  deadly  disease — has  been  sufficiently  dwelt  on. 
Let  us  now  consider  the  second: 

Were  all  oysters  taken  from  the  ocean  and  not  near 
the  mouths  of  harbors  or  rivers  that  bear  sewage,  no 
one  need  ever  hesitate  to  eat  them  raw.  The  trouble 
lies  in  the  fact  that,  as  Professor  Kellogg  puts  it,  "be- 
fore food  mollusca  are  marketed  they  are  almost  in- 
variably  placed  for  a  few  hours  in  fresh  water  to  un- 
dergo what  the  oystermen  term  the  drinking  process. 
Oysters  sold  in  shell  as  well  as  those  that  have  been 
shucked  are  usually  subjected  to  the  fresh  water  treat- 
ment. To  make  delays  and  the  cost  of  transportation 
as  light  as  possible,  the  localities  selected  for  this  are 
almost  without  exception  in  harbors  or  river  mouths 

1  New  York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1910. 


90  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

near  large  markets.  In  very  many  cases  such  waters 
bear  the  sewage  of  cities  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
inhabitants." 

With  these  facts — which  have  often  been  pointed 
out — before  him,  is  it  necessary  to  call  the  reader's 
attention  to  the  circumstance  that  even  if  it  had  never 
been  proved  that  oysters  can  serve  as  conveyers  of 
deadly  diseases,  the  process  of  floating  them — that  is, 
bloating  them  with  sewage — must  be  condemned  as  un- 
speakably vile  and  disgusting*? 

What  aggravates  the  matter  is  that  oysters  have 
what  Professor  Kellogg  calls  "wonderfully  efficient 
mechanisms  for  straining  dangerous  organisms  out  of 
the  waterT  "Several  gallons  of  water  every  day  pass 
through  the  gills  of  every  full-grown  oyster  or  clam, 
and  every  solid  particle  is  removed  from  it  and  re- 
mains in  the  body."  "It  is  thus  plain  that  even  if 
relatively  few  in  the  water,  the  chances  are  that  a 
dangerous  number  of  disease  organisms  will  be  strained 
out  of  it  by  these  shell-iish." 

Indeed,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  most  of  these 
disease  organisms  are  destroyed  by  the  digestive  fluids 
of  oysters  and  those  who  eat  them,  there  would  be 
vastly  more  typhoid  fever  than  there  is  now  from  the 
thirty  million  bushels  that  are  sent  to  our  markets 
every  year  from  our  shore  beds.  The  danger  comes 
from  the  organisms  on  the  gills,  or  on  the  shell,  which, 
in  that  case,  it  is  not  safe  to  handle. 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     91 

Berlin  has  its  Rieself elder — vast  meadows  and  gar- 
dens made  fertile  with  the  city's  sewage.  This  liquid 
sewage  is  subjected  to  such  thorough  chemical  treat- 
ment that  ere  it  reaches  its  destination  it  is  perfectly 
harmless.  When  the  Rieself  elder  were  opened,  the 
city  fathers  had  such  confidence  in  their  chemist  that 
they  ceremoniously  drank  some  of  this  water.  It  was 
a  disgusting,  though  perfectly  safe  thing  to  do.  The 
eating  of  our  sewage-bloated  oysters  is  both  disgusting 
and  unsafe. 

"Cleanliness  is  next  to  godliness"  is  a  motto  which 
it  is  even  more  important  to  apply  to  the  inside  of  the 
body  than  to  the  outside. 

After  this  demonstration  of  the  dangers  and  the 
filthiness  of  the  process  of  floating  oysters,  it  is  need- 
less to  advance  further  arguments.  But  in  order  to 
complete  the  rout  of  the  "floaters" — who  have  long 
fought  so  fiercely  for  the  privilege  of  spoiling  the 
American  oyster — reference  must  be  made  to  the  two 
other  indictments  against  them,  because  of  the  interest 
and  importance  attaching  to  them.  One  is  moral  and 
legal;  the  other,  gastronomic. 

Dr.  Wiley  sums  up  the  two  in  one  sentence:  "Not 
only  does  it  (floating)  deceive  the  customer  in  regard 
to  the  size  of  the  oyster  but  it  deprives  the  oyster  of 
its  proper  taste  and  flavor." 

Osmosis  comes  into  play  in  "floating,"  as  he  further 
points  out:  "By  this  process  the  body  of  the  oyster  af- 


92  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

fects  a  plumpness  and  largeness  which  materially  in- 
creases its  selling  qualities,  as  it  increases  its  weight 
and  size  and,  therefore,  the  profits  of  the  dealer.  The 
principle  of  this  process  depends  upon  the  fact  that 
when  a  soft  substance  like  an  oyster,  containing  a  min- 
eral salt  in  its  composition,  is  brought  in  contact  with 
water,  a  process  of  diffusion  takes  place  which  is 
known  in  chemical  physics  as  osmosis,  whereby  water 
passes  through  the  cell  walls  and  enters  the  cells  of  the 
oyster  and  the  mineral  substance  thereof  is  forced  out 
into  the  external  water.  Larger  volumes  of  water  pass 
into  the  cells  than  accompany  the  particles  of  mineral 
matter  to  the  outside  of  the  cells  and  the  result  is  a 
swelling  of  the  oysters  and  consequent  increase  in  the 
size  and  weight  by  the  addition  of  pure  water,  but  at 
the  expense  of  the  natural  salt,  mostly  chloride  of 
sodium  or  common  salt,  which  the  oyster  contains." 

Thus  does  science  confirm  and  explain  the  epicure's 
perception  that  oysters  are  denatured  by  being  soaked 
in  fresh  water — deprived  of  the  tang  of  the  sea^  which 
tang  to  any  one  who  knows  anything  about  the  art  of 
eating  constitutes  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the  value  of 
an  oyster. 

There  are  exceptions  to  my  statement  that  small 
oysters  are  the  best.  Some  epicures  prefer  the  large, 
adult  Lynnhavens  to  the  small  Blue  Points;  and  the 
Lynnhavens  certainly  are  among  the  finest  in  flavor. 
But  men  who  do  prefer  the  naturally  large  oysters,  or 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     93 

oysters  that  have  been  legitimately  fattened  in  salt 
water,  ought  to  be  the  first  to  fiercely  resent  the  float- 
ing which  is  done  to  deceive  them  as  to  the  real  size 
of  the  oysters  they  pay  for,  and  gives  them  denatured 
oysters,  bloated  and  sickened  with  sewage  water. 

Three  centuries  ago  Massachusetts  boasted  oysters  a 
foot  in  length,  and  in  Maine  a  shell  has  been  found 
measuring  three  inches  over  a  foot.  We  need  not 
worry,  however,  at  the  decreased  size  of  our  bivalves; 
it  makes  them  more  tender — though,  to  be  sure,  also 
less  nutritious.  In  any  case,  however,  the  nutritive 
value  of  an  oyster  is  so  insignificant  as  to  be  prac- 
tically negligible.  How  ludicrously  small  it  is,  is 
shown  by  Dr.  Wiley.  For  one  hundred  pounds  of 
shelled  oysters,  he  says,  only  about  ten  pounds  of  meat 
are  found.  In  ten  pounds  of  the  meat  there  is  over  80 
per  cent,  of  water;  so  that  ''the  actual  nourishment  con- 
tained in  100  pounds  of  oysters  is  reduced  to  a  little 
over  one  poundV 

Could  anything  more  triumphantly  demonstrate  the 
comparative  importance  of  Flavor  over  nutriment  in 
this,  the  most  delicious  of  all  sea  foods'? 

Yet  it  is  to  this  all-important  Flavor  that  our  dealers 
show  such  brutal  indifference,  not  only  in  the  various 
ways  pointed  out  in  the  preceding  pages  but  in  other 
ways.  For  instance,  oysters  spoil  even  more  rapidly 
than  fish  and  should  therefore  be  kept  alive  to  the  last 
possible  moment  before  serving.     Yet  how  lamentably 


94  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

seldom  is  this  done !  It  can  be  done  not  only  in  cities 
on  the  coast,  but  in  those  of  the  interior,  it  being  possi- 
ble to  keep  oysters  alive  and  in  excellent  state  for  con- 
sumption for  a  week  or  ten  days  or  even  longer. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  the  oystermen  to  accuse  them 
of  perpetrating  all  their  crimes  against  shellfish  from 
sheer  greed  for  extra  gain.  Ignorance  also  comes  into 
play.  Only  one  opener  in  fifty  seems  to  know  that  the 
best  thing  by  far  about  an  oyster  is  the  liquid  in  its 
shell.  Watch  the  other  forty-nine  and  you  will  see 
them  wantonly  wasting  this  precious,  fragrant  liquid, 
and  in  many  cases  they  will  serve  the  oyster  on  the  flat 
shell,  so  that  you  get  no  juice  at  all.  Always  ask  for 
them  on  the  deep  shell  and  don't  he  afraid,  after  you 
have  transferred  the  morsel  to  your  mouth  to  drink 
the  liquid  from  the  shell.  It  may  not  look  elegant,  but 
elegance  be  hanged! 

Dealers  who  wish  to  get  rich  quick  by  creating  an 
unprecedented  demand  for  oysters  with  the  real  tang 
of  the  sea  should  bear  all  these  things  in  mind  and 
further  prepare  themselves  by  reading  pages  158  to 
164  of  Dr.  Wiley's  Foods  and  their  Adulteration. 
Then  let  them  remember  that  honesty  is  the  only 
profitable  policy.  The  public  is  not  in  a  mood  to  be 
fooled  and  trifled  with  any  longer. 

In  the  autumn  of  1912  Dr.  Wiley  called  attention 
(in  "Good  Housekeeping"  for  November)  to  the  im- 
portant fact  that  under  present  conditions  not  only  is 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     95 

it  seldom  safe  to  eat  raw  oysters,  but  that  they  are  par- 
ticularly risky  in  two  of  the  "R"  months — September 
and  October — because  of  the  danger  of  pollution  due 
to  the  crowding  at  the  seashore,  which  is  becoming 
greater  and  greater  as  the  summers  wear  on,  many  of 
the  resorts  being  near  beds  in  which  oysters  thus  be- 
come sewage-contaminated  even  before  they  are 
"floated"  by  dealers. 

In  September,  1912,  the  Bureau  of  Chemistry  pub- 
lished its  Bulletin  156  on  Sewage  Polluted  Oysters  as  a 
Cause  of  Typhoid  and  other  G astro-Intestinal  Disturb- 
ances^ by  George  W.  Stiles,  Jr.,  Chief  of  the  Bacteri- 
ological Laboratory.  He  reviews  the  literature  on  the 
subject,  showing  how  in  many  cases  epidemics  of  ty- 
phoid and  other  diseases  were  traced  to  the  eating  of 
raw  shellfish,  and  then  relates  how,  with  a  detective  in- 
genuity worthy  of  a  Sherlock  Holmes  or  a  Burns,  seven- 
teen cases  of  typhoid  and  eighty-three  cases  of  gastro- 
enteritis following  a  banquet  held  at  Goshen,  N.  Y., 
in  October,  1911,  were  traced  directly  to  eating  Rock- 
away  oysters  floated  at  Indian  Creek,  and  twenty-six 
other  cases,  ten  of  them  typhoid,  were  traced  to  the 
eating  of  Rockaways,  some  of  which  came  from  the 
same  lot  furnished  for  the  Goshen  banquet. 

The  Rockaway  oysters  thus  got  a  "black  eye,"  but 
if  perhaps  the  worst  offenders,  they  are  by  no  means 
the  only  ones.  "All  the  oysters  of  New  York  Bay, 
Narragansett  Bay,  and  the  Potomac  River,  the  waters 


96  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

near  Norfolk,  Va.,  and  the  mouth  of  the  James  River, 
the  mouths  of  the  Connecticut  and  Merrimac  Rivers, 
and  other  industrial  streams,  and  the  continental  border 
of  Long  Island  Sound,  are  open  to  suspicion,"  says 
Dr.  Wiley,  and  should  not  be  eaten  raw.  More  and 
more,  too,  will  object  to  eating  them  cooked.  Boiled 
filth  does  not  appeal  to  the  imagination. 

The  plain  and  distressing  truth  is  that  our  great  shell 
fish  business,  the  pride  of  Gastronomic  America,  will 
be  ruined  altogether  unless  the  barbarous  custom  of 
discharging  the  sewage  matter  of  cities  and  villages  into 
rivers  and  the  ocean  is  stopped.  It  seems  incredible 
that  we,  with  our  incalculable  wealth,  should  be  so  far 
behind  Europeans,  especially  Germans,  in  this  matter 
of  keeping  our  sea  food  clean  and  edible.  The  disposal 
of  sewage  matter  after  German  methods  is  the  most 
important  problem  now  before  the  American  public, 
more  important  by  far  than  tariff  questions,  warships, 
irrigation  projects  and  Panama  canals. 

Typhoid  fever  could  be  reduced  to  a  minimum  were 
the  sewage  disposed  of  scientifically  as  it  is  in  some 
German  and  English  cities.  The  startling  assertion 
that  in  1909  there  were  more  cases  of  typhoid  in  the 
United  States  than  of  plague  in  India  was  made  by 
Dr.  Allan  J.  McLaughlin,  of  the  United  States  Public 
Health  Service  at  a  meeting  in  New  York,  December 
5,  1912,  of  the  Association  of  Life  Insurance  Presi- 
dents.    The  typhoid  fever  rate  per  100,000  is,  in  Ber- 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS    97 

lin,  only  2.9;  in  London  it  is  3.3;  in  Vienna,  3.8.  In 
Boston  it  is  1 1.3;  in  New  York,  1 1.6;  in  Chicago,  13.7 ; 
in  Philadelphia,  17.5;  in  Washington,  23.2;  while  in 
Milwaukee  and  Minneapolis  it  rises  to  45.7  and  58.7 
respectively.  The  annual  loss  to  the  country  from 
these  fever  cases  is  put  at  $100,000,000. 

"smoked"  ham,  bacon,  and  fish. 

Some  Americans  have  an  inexplicable  prejudice — 
which,  however,  is  fast  disappearing — against  fresh 
pork  and  against  sausages,  but  bacon  and  ham  are 
relished  universally,  and  it  is  therefore  of  national  im- 
portance that  they  should  be  made  appetizing.  But 
they  fare  as  badly  as  our  bivalves  and  our  fowls. 
Time  was  when  a  crisp  slice  of  bacon  would  give  zest 
to  a  whole  breakfast,  but  the  bacon  served  now  in 
nineteen  cases  out  of  twenty  has  no  more  flavor  than 
sawdust;  it  is  eaten  without  pleasure,  and  therefore 
burdens  the  stomach  for  hours.  Virginia  ham  has 
maintained  its  supremacy  and  there  are  a  few  pack- 
ers of  other  hams  and  bacon  who  uphold  a  high 
standard;  but  most  of  them  have  succumbed  to  the 
temptation  of  curing  their  pork  products  with  cheap 
preservatives  which  denature  them,  making  them  as 
flavorless  as  floating  makes  the  oysters,  and  cold  stor- 
age the  poultry. 

Has  the  reader  ever  spent  a  summer  in  a  farm-house 
and  casually  come  into  a  corner  of  the  woodshed  where 


/■/ 


Where  smoked  hams  were  suspended  from  the  rafters 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     99 

smoked  hams  were  suspended  from  the  rafters?  If  so, 
he  will  remember  the  appetizing  fragrance  which  sud- 
denly made  his  mouth  water  and  make  him  long  for 
breakfast.  Some  persons  think  they  do  not  like  smoked 
meats;  but  they  almost  invariably  do  when  they  thus 
come  across  the  real  thing. 

Smoke  is  not  only  the  best  of  all  preservatives,  it 
is  also  the  most  valuable  of  condiments,  imparting  to 
meats  or  fish  a  delicate  aroma  without  altering  their 
natural  flavor.  A  famous  Austrian  physiologist,  Pro- 
fessor Briicke,  pointed  out  many  years  ago  that  smoked 
meats  are  more  digestible  than  fresh  meats ;  but  he  did 
not  give  the  reason,  which  is  that  the  delicate  yet  pene- 
trating Flavor  added  by  the  smoke  creates  an  appetite 
and  thus  causes  a  flow  of  digestive  juices  to  the  stomach. 
The  American  consumer  is  now  usually  deprived  of 
this  healthful  condiment  and  wholesome  pleasure  be- 
cause those  who  handle  pork  products  have  discovered 
that  they  can  save  much  time,  trouble,  and  money  by 
soaking  them,  as  just  intimated,  in  cheap  solutions  of 
chemicals  instead  of  smoking  them  in  the  old-fashioned 
way,  carefully  and  slowly. 

Farmers  are  busy  folk  and  therefore  naturally  eager 
to  learn  ways  of  lessening  their  labors.  They  conse- 
quently succumb  readily  on  reading  an  alluring  adver- 
tisement like  the  following,  clipped  from  a  paper  pub- 
lished m  a  Western  village : 


loo  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

"Smoke  Your  Meat  With  a  Brush 

There's  a  new  and  better  way  of  smoking  meat. 
You  accomplish  in  but  a  trifle  of  time  all  that  you 
can  by  the  tedious  old  fashioned  process.  Your  meat 
will  be  hard  and  firm,  it  will  be  protected  from  all 
germs  and  insects  and  it  will  have  a  more  delicate 
flavor  than  if  smoked  in  the  old  way.     Use 

Brown's  Condensed  Smoke 

It  contains  all  the  preservative  elements  of  the  smoke, 
without  the  rank,  disagreeable  elements.  You  simply 
apply  it  with  a  brush  or  sponge,  giving  the  meat  one  or 
two  coats,  and  the  smoking  is  done.     Price  75c." 

In  England,  also,  long  famed  for  its  deliciously 
flavored  smoked  hams  and  bacon,  the  farmers  and 
packers  have  been  approached  by  the  tempter.  "A 
case  in  point,"  says  the  "Lancet"  of  February  5,  1910, 
"is  seen  in  a  rapid  method  of  making  hams,  bacon,  and 
certain  fishes  appear  to  be  smoked  by  applying  to 
them  a  fluid  called  'smoke  essence.'  " 

Is  it  straight  dealing,  it  asks,  to  call  an  article  painted 
over  with  smoke  essence  "smoked"?  "We  had  oc- 
casion recently,"  this  leading  medical  journal  con- 
tinues, "to  examine  a  specimen  of  smoke  essence  in 
the  laboratory,  and  the  results  of  the  analysis  were  in- 
teresting. We  found  it  to  consist  chiefly  of  creosote, 
analine  dye,  and  a  salt  of  iron."  Even  if  such  a  mix- 
ture is  harmless  "that  fact  does  not  justify  leading  a 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     loi 

consumer  to  suppose  that  a  bloater,  a  tongue,  a  rasher 
of  bacon  or  ham,  treated  by  this  simple  process,  had 
been  adequately  cured  by  the  operation  well  known  as 
'smoking.'  There  can  be  no  question  at  all  that  the 
color  is  added  to  complete  the  disguise,  and  we  feel 
bound  to  admire  the  ingenuity  of  the  inventor  of  a 
mixture  who  puts  into  it  a  salt  of  iron  which  is  cal- 
culated to  give  a  side  of  bacon  an  appearance  of 
natural  rustiness." 

In  conclusion,  the  "Lancet"  expresses  its  regret  that 
such  matters  as  these  affecting  the  purity  of  the  food 
supply  were  not  "strongly  dealt  with"  when  the  De- 
partmental Committee  on  Food  Preservatives  and 
Coloring  Matters  issued  its  recommendations  nearly  a 
decade  previously. 

It  is  passing  strange  how  patiently  the  average  Eng- 
lishman, and  still  more  the  average  American,  allows 
himself  to  be  fooled  by  food  manipulators  whose  chief 
aim  is  to  save  time,  trouble,  and  expense. 

The  familiar  definition  of  genius  as  "a  capacity  for 
taking  pains"  is  incorrect,  but  such  a  capacity  is  cer- 
tainly necessary  for  the  production  of  the  best  foods, 
including  bacon  and  ham.  We  Americans,  speaking 
collectively,  lack  it  and  that  is  one  of  the  main  rea- 
sons why  we  must  be  branded  as  an  ungastronomic 
nation. 

A  striking  illustration  of  the  importance  the  Bo- 
hemians, for  instance,  attach  to  such  matters  is  found 


102  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

in  the  village  of  Wallern,  where  a  cooperative  society 
has  been  formed  for  the  sole  purpose  of  getting  meats 
smoked  in  the  best  possible  manner,  with  beech 
wood. 

The  point  I  wish  to  call  special  attention  to  is  that 
the  pork  products  in  this  model  house  are  smoked,  ac- 
cording to  the  size  of  the  pieces,  for  a  period  of  two 
to  three  months. 

In  a  recent  American  book  on  pigs  these  directions 
are  given :  "If  the  hams  are  to  be  smoked  they  should 
be  hung  in  the  smoke  stoves  at  least  three  daysJ^ 

Three  days  I  In  Germany  and  Austria,  where  the 
world-famed  Westphalian  and  Prager  hams  are  cured, 
six  weeks  is  the  minimum  time  for  a  good  article.  The 
maximum,  for  the  highest-priced  hams,  is  three  months. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  understand  why  so 
many  Americans  imagine  they  do  not  like  smoked 
meats.  They  have  in  mind  either  such  meats  as  have 
been  chemically  "smoked,"  miles  away  from  any 
smoke  house  or  stove,  or  such  as  have  been  actually 
smoked,  but  too  briefly,  or  in  too  strong  smoke. 

Dealers  have  slyly  taken  advantage  of  the  naturally 
growing  aversion  to  "smoked"  meats.  "Slightly 
Smoked"  is  a  label  one  often  sees  now,  and  ere  long, 
if  not  checked  they  will  have  the  audacity  to  say  to 
a  housewife  asking  for  smoked  ham  or  fish  or  bacon 
that  they  have  "none  in  stock,"  there  being  "so  little 
demand  for  it." 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     103 

That  is  the  way  many  of  the  best  things  are  crowded 
out  of  the  market. 

In  conclusion,  let  me  whisper  in  the  reader's  ear  the 
secret  why  those  who  handle  pork  products  and  fish  are 
so  eager  to  get  rid  of  the  smoke  house  that  during  the 
process  of  smoking  the  ham  and  bacon  may  lose  up  to 
twenty  per  cent,  of  its  weight. 

"But  why  does  the  dealer  not  charge  more,  to  make 
up  for  loss  of  weight^"  He  does,  dear  Madam.  He 
charges  more  every  year  and  saves  the  full  weight,  too, 
by  avoiding  the  smoke  house.  The  joke  is  on  you. 
He  will  do  this  as  long  as  you  meekly  tolerate  it.  He 
will  tell  you  with  a  look  of  injured  innocence  that  you 
are  "the  first  one  to  complain" — and  perhaps  you  are, 
though  merely  one  of  many  thousands  who  have  been 
fooled. 

As  I  have  said,  there  are  exceptions.  A  few  firms 
are  selling  real  smoked  ham  and  bacon,  and  they  are 
coining  money.  Others  will  perhaps  find  out  ere  long 
that  it  pays  better  to  please  the  public  than  to  fool  it. 

At  present,  the  outlook  seems  hopeless.  Some  years 
ago,  when  there  were  still  a  few  dealers  left  who  did 
not  try  to  get  rich  quick  at  the  expense  of  your  stomach 
and  health,  I  used  to  lunch  often  on  smoked  fish.  But 
in  the  year  1912  you  could  not — at  least  I  could  not — 
get  a  genuine  smoked  fish  for  love  or  money.  One 
day  in  December,  I  walked  into  a  delicatessen  store  in 
which  I  saw  through  the  window  a  plateful  of  white- 


104  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

fish,  a  variety  which  is  particularly  good  smoked. 
They  were  choice  specimens,  but  after  a  sniff  at  them 
I  beat  a  retreat  with,  I  presume,  a  disgusted  expression. 
"What's  the  matter  with  those  fish^"  asked  the  dealer. 
"They  are  a  first-class  article."  "Fine  fish,"  I  re- 
torted, "but  they  are  not  smoked."  "They  may  not  be 
smoked  enough  .  .  ."  "They  are  not  smoked  at 
all,"  I  interrupted,  "they  are  chemically  preserved  and 
dyed  to  save  weight."  "You  seem  to  know  more  about 
it  than  I  do,"  he  said.  "I  certainly  do,"  I  answered: 
"If  they  were  smoked  I  would  take  a  dozen  of  them." 

Fancy  the  situation — to  be  unable,  in  the  second 
largest  city  of  the  world,  to  get  smoked  fish !  I  have 
tried  dozens  of  places,  always  with  the  same  result. 
If  others  refused  to  buy  the  denatured  stuff  offered, 
smoked  fish  would  soon  be  in  the  market  again. 

The  best  foreign  methods  of  smoking  meats  are  de- 
scribed in  No.  3655  of  the  Daily  Consular  and  Trade 
Reports  (Washington,  December  8,  1909).  Fortunes 
are  in  store  for  all  American  packers  who  will  follow 
those  methods  and  advertise  honestly: 

"  We  give  our  pigs  clean  food,  feeding  a  fine  flavor 
into  our  hams  and  bacon ;  we  do  not  destroy  this  flavor 
with  chemical  preservatives  but  intensify  its  appetizing 
qualities  by  the  use  of  beechwood  smoke." 

Where  beech-wood  or  hickory,  oak,  or  maple  are  not 
available,  corn  cobs  make  a  cheap  and  satisfactory  sub- 
stitute. 


OUR    DENATURED    FOODS     105 

FLAVOR    IN    BUTTER. 

On  every  table  in  the  land,  except  that  of  the  very 
poor,  there  is  one  article  which  appears  two  or  three 
times  a  day  all  the  year  round,  and  that  article  is  butter. 
More  than  $300,000,000  worth  of  it  is  consumed 
every  year  in  the  United  States.  One  would  therefore 
suppose  that  the  public  would  insist  with  all  its  might 
and  main  on  having  its  butter  good.  It  does  no  such 
thing,  but  meekly  accepts  the  indifferent  and  often  vile 
stuff  offered  by  dealers — an  unpalatable  lubricator 
which  I  would  no  more  think  of  eating  than  I  would 
axle  grease. 

A  few  years  ago  Miss  Alice  Lakey,  chairman  of  the 
food  investigating  committee  of  the  National  Consum- 
ers' League,  said  that  "ninety-five  per  cent,  of  all  sam- 
ples of  butter  submitted  were  adulterated.  We  are 
eating  practically  no  pure  butter." 

While  there  is  evidence  to  show  that  butter  was 
made  four  thousand  years  ago,  it  seems  to  have  taken 
some  nations  a  long  time  to  "catch  up  with  the  proces- 
sion." We  are  a  long  way  ahead,  on  the  whole,  of  the 
Spaniards,  who,  as  late  as  the  seventeenth  century,  kept 
butter  in  medicine  shops  "for  external  use  only" 
(doubtless  there  were  good  reasons!)  and  who  to  this 
day  hardly  know  what  edible  butter  is;  or  of  the  Irish 
of  that  same  century  who  are  spoken  of  by  James 
Houghton  as  rotting  their  table  butter  by  burying  it  in 


io6  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

bogs.  But  we  are  lamentably  behind  some  of  the 
European  nations,  notably  the  French,  Germans, 
Austrians,  and  Swiss,  in  the  making  and  the  apprecia- 
tion of  first-class  butter. 

In  some  of  our  leading  restaurants  and  hotels,  as 
well  as  in  expensive  clubs  and  the  residences  of  wealthy 
families,  one  may  come  across  such  butter;  but  one 
is  not  sure  of  getting  the  real  thing  even  after  paying 
the  highest  price.  I  seldom  eat  it  at  home — there  are 
too  many  disappointments — and  when  I  travel  in  the 
United  States  I  rarely  have  the  courage  to  try  it. 
In  rural  summer  resorts  we  have  found  that  the  only 
way  to  get  edible  butter  is  to  make  it  ourselves. 

As  regards  Europe,  on  the  contrary,  I  can  repeat 
what  I  have  said  about  poultry:  that  during  a  five 
months'  trip  in  1912  I  did  not  once  have  butter  placed 
before  me  which  I  could  not  eat  with  pleasure. 

The  unwillingness  of  Americans  to  take  pains  in  the 
preparation  of  foods  to  which  I  have  referred  as  one 
of  the  main  indications  of  our  being  an  ungastronomic 
nation  is  strikingly  illustrated  in  the  department  of 
butter-making,  wherein  it  is  the  chief  cause  of  our  in- 
feriority. 

Our  Government  has  done  its  best  to  enlighten  the 
butter-makers.  In  1904  the  Department  of  Agricul- 
ture published,  for  free  distribution,  Farmers'  Bulletin 
No.  241 :  "Butter-making  on  the  Farm,"  by  Edwin  H. 
Webster,  Chief  of  Dairy  Division,  Bureau  of  Animal 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     107 

Industry;  and,  in  1905,  Circular  No.  56  of  the  same 
Bureau:  'Tacts  Concerning  the  History,  Commerce 
and  Manufacture  of  Butter,"  by  Harry  Hay  ward, 
assistant  chief.  These  pamphlets  contain  in  concise 
form  invaluable  information  which,  if  generally  util- 
ized, would  revolutionize  the  butter  business. 

Mr.  Webster  refers  to  "the  great  amount  of  poor 
butter  made  on  the  farm,"  and  Mr.  Hay  ward  also  con- 
fesses that  "a  very  small  percentage  of  all  dairy  butter 
made  is  of  really  high  grade." 

When  one  reads  of  all  the  diverse  precautions  that 
must  be  taken  to  ensure  a  good  article,  and  bears  in 
mind  the  characteristically  American  unwillingness  to 
take  pains  with  the  things  that  are  put  into  our 
stomachs,  one  wonders  not  that  our  butter  is  so  inferior. 

A  few  of  the  hundred-and-one  precautions  necessary 
to  secure  a  first-class  article  may  be  briefly  mentioned. 
The  cow  must  be  kept  carefully  cleaned,  particularly 
the  udder,  and  so  must  the  hands  of  the  milker,  and  the 
pail  which  holds  the  milk.  "The  habit  of  some  milk- 
ers of  wetting  their  hands  with  milk  just  as  they  begin 
is  a  filthy  practice  and  the  cause  of  much  bad  milk  and 
poor  butter."  There  must  be  no  hidden,  inaccessible 
places  in  the  pails,  nor  must  rusty  tinware  be  used,  be- 
cause it  imparts  a  metallic  flavor  to  the  milk.  Some 
of  the  so-called  washing  powders  are  very  objection- 
able. The  walls  of  the  barn  must  be  whitewashed,  and 
the  ventilation  such  that  the  air  is  changed  every  few 


io8  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

minutes.  The  pails  must  be  rinsed  first  with  cold,  then 
with  boiling  water.  The  milk  must  be  removed  as 
soon  as  possible  from  the  barn,  where  it  readily  absorbs 
dust  or  bad  odors  from  the  air,  and  then  stored  in  a 
cold  place,  far  away  from  decaying  vegetables  or  fruits 
or  other  things,  the  odors  of  which  it  might  absorb. 
The  sun  should  pervade  the  cold  storage  room  but  not 
look  on  the  milk.  If  possible,  the  cream  should  be 
collected  by  means  of  a  separator,  for  the  proper 
handling  of  which  there  are  a  number  of  rules,  the 
neglect  of  any  one  of  which  will  spoil  the  butter.  It 
is  absolutely  necessary  to  cool  the  cream  thoroughly, 
immediately  after  separating,  and  to  avoid  mixing  of 
cold  with  warm  cream.  Then  there  are  a  number  of 
directions  concerning  churning;  working  the  butter  to 
get  out  the  milk  and  water;  packing;  marketing;  feed- 
ing the  cows,  and  so  on,  none  of  which  can  be  disre- 
garded with  impunity. 

This  complexity  of  the  art  of  butter-making  may 
help  to  explain  the  situation  in  America,  but  does  not 
excuse  it,  for  in  the  gastronomic  countries  of  Europe 
people  are  not  too  lazy,  ignorant,  or  indifferent  to  turn 
out  a  first-class  article  every  day  in  the  year. 

What  I  wish  to  call  particular  attention  to  is  that  all 
these  precautions  necessary  for  the  making  of  first- 
class  butter  relate  to  its  Flavor.  Persons  buying  butter 
for  any  other  purpose  than  the  enjoyment  of  its  Flavor 
are  extremely  foolish,  for  they  can  get  the  same  amount 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     109 

of  fat  and  general  nourishment  very  much  cheaper  in  a 
hundred  other  ways. 

It  is  for  the  sake  of  securing  an  agreeable  aroma  or 
Flavor  that  all  the  rules  just  enumerated,  and  two-score 
more,  must  be  observed.  If  this  is  not  done — if  only 
one  or  two  of  them  are  neglected — there  are  developed 
in  the  milk,  or  the  cream,  or  the  churned  butter,  bac- 
teria of  a  very  disagreeable  kind,  which  will  convert 
butter  that  might  have  been  of  the  highest  grade  into  a 
second,  third,  or  fourth  grade  article,  or  one  quite  unfit 
for  human  consumption,  because  of  excessively  rancid, 
fishy,  smoky,  tallowy,  leeky,  soapy,  cheesy,  or  other  fla- 
vors. The  art  of  butter-making  consists  in  eliminating 
all  disagreeable  flavors  and  fostering  the  agreeable  ones. 

Renovated  or  process  butter  is  made  of  butter  in 
which,  on  account  of  careless  manufacture  or  storing, 
the  disagreeable  bacteria  have  so  got  the  upper  hand  of 
the  agreeable  ones  that  even  those  persons  who,  because 
of  a  slender  purse  or  an  imperfectly  developed  sense 
of  smell,  are  contented  with  fourth-grade  butter,  refuse 
to  buy  it.  This  stuff  (often  sold,  horribile  dictu^  as 
"cooking  butter")  is  subjected  to  a  process  of  purifica- 
tion, which  makes  it  a  wholesome  and  nutritious  article 
of  diet.  Yet  it  is  sold  at  a  much  lower  price,  for  the 
reason  that  it  is  inferior  in  Flavor  to  good  butter. 

The  long  and  fierce  fight  between  the  butter-makers 
and  the  manufacturers  of  oleomargarine  is  also  in  the 
final  analysis,  a  question  of  Flavor. 


no  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

Oleomargarine  is  a  mixture  of  vegetable  and  ani- 
mal fats,  diversely  mixed.  This  mixture  is  churned 
with  milk  to  impart  a  butter  Flavor;  or  there  is  added 
to  it  more  or  less  butter,  in  which  case  it  is  known  com- 
mercially as  butterine,  although  legally  it  is  classified 
as  oleomargarine. 

If  made  honestly,  of  clean  material,  and  unadulter- 
ated with  borated  Chinese  egg-yolks,  or  with  preserva- 
tives, oleomargarine  is  a  perfectly  unobjectionable  and 
wholesome  food.  The  trouble  is  that,  as  Dr.  Wiley 
has  pointed  out  (1911),  "there  has  been  a  constant  dis- 
position on  the  part  of  dishonest  manufacturers  and 
dealers,  since  the  time  when  oleomargarine  became  a 
commercial  commodity,  to  sell  it  as  butter.  Although 
the  penalties  of  National  and  State  laws  are  very  se- 
vere in  this  respect  the  practice  is  continued.  The  op- 
portunity for  gain  is  so  great  that  the  cupidity  of  the 
manufacturer  overcomes  his  fear  of  punishment  and 
disgrace." 

There  has  been  much  outcry  because  of  the  special 
tax  on  oleomargarine  and  the  severe  laws  against  selling 
it  as  butter.  As  a  matter  of  fact  these  laws  should  be 
even  more  severe  and  much  more  rigidly  enforced. 
The  practice  of  selling  it  as  butter  not  only  defrauds  the 
consumer  but  it  tends  to  drive  real  butter  out  of  the 
market,  since  such  butter  cannot  be  produced  at  nearly 
so  low  a  cost  as  margarine,  especially  if  made  with  the 
care  and  expenditure  of  time  necessary  for  the  produc- 


OUR    DENATURED     FOODS     in 

tion  of  first-class  butter.  The  best  butter  costs  five  or 
six  times  as  much  as  the  best  margarine.  It  is  needless 
to  say  that  in  the  compounding  of  "butterine"  the  best 
butter  is  not  likely  to  be  used. 

By  mixing  milk  or  butter  with  his  fats,  the  manu- 
facturer of  margarine  confesses  that  his  own  product 
lacks  the  one  thing  which  gives  butter  its  advantage, 
for  table  use,  over  a  dozen  other  fats  that  might  be 
chosen — its  appetizing  Flavor,  which  makes  it  digesti- 
ble and  enables  us  to  eat  it  with  relish  every  day  in 
the  year.  It  is  owing  to  this  superiority  that  pure 
butter  is  entitled  to  legal  protection  against  unfair 
competition. 

It  might  be  argued  that  the  American  farmer,  whose 
butter  is,  as  we  have  seen,  usually  of  a  low  grade,  does 
not  deserve  the  protection  the  Government  gives  him 
against  the  underselling  of  the  margarine  maker,  be- 
cause good  oleomargarine  is  preferable  to  bad  butter. 
Such  protection  is,  however,  due  to  the  associated  sys- 
tem of  manufacture  known  as  creameries.  The  cream- 
ery, which  in  1900  had  already  usurped  one-half  the 
butter  business  in  the  country,  "has  done  much,"  as 
Mr.  Hayward  remarks,  "to  improve  the  quality  of 
American  butter,  and  if  all  butter  came  direct  from 
creameries  there  would  be  no  such  quantities  sold  by 
producers  at  prices  which  are  often  actually  below 
the  cost  of  production,  as  is  the  case  at  the  present 


112  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

SWEET    BUTTER   VERSUS    SALT. 

There  are  now  a  number  of  model  creameries  in  the 
United  States  turning  out  butter  which  would  probably- 
equal  the  best  European  were  it  not  habitually  spoiled 
by  the  injudicious  use  of  a  "starter"  to  turn  the  cream 
quite  sour,  and  by  the  addition  of  salt.  The  subtle  and 
much  disputed  question  of  sour  cream  versus  sweet 
will  be  discussed  in  the  chapter  on  French  Supremacy. 
That  of  "salt  or  no  salt"  must  be  disposed  of  now. 

The  assertion  frequently  made  that  unsalted  butter 
tastes  insipid  to  most  users  is  not  confirmed  by  my 
own  experience.  No  doubt  the  subtle  aroma  of  sweet 
butter  escapes  many  who  are  partially  anosmic  (a 
frequent  defect  analogous  to  color-blindness),  or  who 
have  neglected  to  train  their  sense  of  smell,  or  who 
have  deadened  their  olfactory  nerve  by  excessive  smok- 
ing or  drinking  of  strong  liquors,  so  that  they  cannot 
appreciate  the  delicate  aroma  of  European  butter.  But 
I  have  come  across  many  Americans  at  home  and 
abroad  who,  given  a  fair  chance,  instantly  and  em- 
phatically preferred  the  unsalted  butter. 

Once  I  made  a  special  experiment  at  a  rural  boarding 
house  in  Maine.  Of  a  dozen  persons  at  the  table  only 
one  liked  salt  butter  better;  two  had  no  decided  prefer- 
ence, while  the  other  nine  voted,  after  a  fair  trial  and 
comparison,  for  sweet  butter  first,  last,  and  all  the 
time. 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     113 

The  only  trouble  was  that  much  more  was  consumed 
of  the  sweet  than  had  been  eaten  of  the  salt;  which 
shows  the  folly  of  those  dealers  who  think  they  are 
smart  in  selling  pounds  of  salt  at  the  price  of  butter, 
whereas  in  truth  they  would  sell  twice  as  much  butter 
if  they  left  it  sweet,  because  that  kind  is  so  much  more 
palatable  and  tempting.  Boarding  house  keepers  will 
always  order  salt  butter. 

Undoubtedly  the  vast  majority  of  Americans  at 
present  prefer,  or  think  they  prefer,  salted  butter.  To 
convince  them  that  this  preference  simply  proves  that 
their  gastronomic  education  has  been  neglected,  let  me 
add  a  few  significant  details. 

Dr.  Wiley,  in  whose  taste,  judgment  and  knowl- 
edge we  all  have  so  much  faith  says  that  "the  best 
grade  of  butter  is  that  which  receives  no  treatment 
other  than  the  washing  and  working  process  to  which 
attention  has  been  called.  This  kind  of  butter  is 
known  as  natural  or  unsalted  or  uncolored  butter,  that 
is,  a  fresh,  sweet  product  of  an  agreeable  aroma,  palata- 
ble, of  fine  texture  and  grain,  and  is  the  best  product 
of  its  kind  for  human  consumption.  It  also  brings 
the  highest  price  on  the  market." 

Until  a  few  years  ago  it  was  almost  impossible,  even 
in  New  York  City,  to  get  unsalted  butter.  To-day  it 
is  usually  served  in  the  most  expensive  hotels  and 
restaurants,  some  of  the  wealthy  folk  use  it  at  home, 
and  the  general  customer  has  a  chance  to  buy  it  in  a 


114  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

few  places,  at  fancy  prices.  It  is  seldom  as  good  as 
the  same  product  in  the  humblest  inn  of  Continental 
Europe,  but  it  is  improving  from  year  to  year. 

In  connection  with  this  fact  it  is  interesting  to  read 
the  words  of  Chief  Hayward,  in  the  Government  pub- 
lication already  referred  to. 

"What  is  known  as  the  highest  class  trade  demands 
a  much  lighter  salted  butter  than  is  demanded  for  the 
lower  grades.  Furthermore^  there  is  an  increasing 
tendency  on  the  part  of  the  best  trade  to  ash  for  a 
butter  containing  less  and  less  salt.  Butter  which  has 
a  clean^  pure  flavor  needs  little  salt;  that  which  is  of- 
■flavor  or  tainted  in  any  way  is  improved  by  being 
strongly  salted'' 

In  other  words,  the  worse  the  butter,  the  more  salt 
it  needs,  and  the  better  the  butter  the  less  salt  it 
needs.  From  this  it  follows  logically  that  the  best 
butter  needs  no  salt  at  all. 

The  notion  that  salt  "brings  out"  the  Flavor  is 
ridiculous;  it  spoils  it.  In  the  gastronomic  countries 
of  Europe  the  consumer  would  no  more  allow  salt  to 
be  put  into  the  butter  he  eats  than  into  the  cream 
he  puts  in  his  coffee,  or  the  ice-cream  he  takes  for  his 
dessert. 

There  is  absolutely  no  excuse  for  continuing  the 
barbarous  practice  of  denaturing  American  butter  by 
the  addition  of  salt.  It  does  not  even  help  to  make 
it  keep.     On  this  point  Dr.  Wiley  remarks:  "It  is  a 


OUR     DENATURED     FOODS     115 

Gommon  supposition  that  salt  in  butter  is  a  preserva- 
tive. This  is  true  when  used  in  large  quantities,  that 
is,  in  quantities  which  render  the  butter  somewhat  un- 
palatable. The  very  small  quantity  of  salt  used  purely 
for  condimental  purposes  cannot  be  regarded  as  aiding 
in  any  material  way  the  preservation  of  the  product." 

There  is  also  a  comic  side  to  the  question  and  the 
joke  is  on  the  butter-maker  and  dealer.  I  have  already 
pointed  out  that  we  are  tempted  to  eat  much  more  of 
the  sweet  butter  than  of  the  salt.  There  is  another 
weighty  reason  why  the  makers  would  profit  by  leaving 
out  the  salt.  Dr.  Wiley  observes  that  "there  is  a 
tendency  on  the  part  of  the  greedy  manufacturer  to 
add  excessive  quantities  of  salt  because  it  is  very  much 
cheaper  than  the  butter  itself  and  thus  he  hopes  to  add 
to  the  profit  of  the  industry.  On  the  contrary  this 
practice  usually  results  in  loss,  since  such  highly  salted 
butter  naturally  brings  the  lowest  price." 

The  funniest  part  of  the  story  remains  to  be  told. 
By  throwing  in  handfuls  of  salt  the  maker  not  only 
lowers  the  market  price  of  his  butter  but  also  decreases 
its  weight!  Read  Assistant  Chief  Hay  ward's  ex- 
planation of  this  seeming  paradox: 

"Butter  will  usually  weigh  less  after  the  salt  has  been 
added  and  the  butter  worked  than  before.  This  is  due 
to  the  fact,  already  mentioned,  that  salt  unites,  or  col- 
lects, the  small  drops  of  moisture  into  drops  so  large 
that  they  can  be  separated  from  the  butter,  and,  as  the 


ii6  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

total  weight  of  the  water  or  brine  thus  separated  ex- 
ceeds the  weight  of  salt  added,  the  butter  consequently 
loses  weight  by  reason  of  salting." 

If,  in  spite  of  all  this^  the  butter-maker  and  dealer 
persist  in  foisting  strongly  salted  butter  on  you,  beware ! 
It  can  only  be  because,  as  Chief  Hayward  has  pointed 
out,  "that  which  is  'off  flavor'  or  tainted  in  any  way, 
is  improved  by  being  strongly  salted."  Do  you  wish 
to  habitually  eat  bad  butter  thus  "improved'"?  Can 
it  be  possible  that  you  do  not  resent  being  the  dupe  of 
the  astute  butter  men? 


^xa..... 


IV 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  SAVORY  COOKING 


DESIRABLE    RAW    FOODS. 

OBODY  wants  a  boiled  or  fried  orange 
or  grapefruit  for  breakfast.  Other 
fruits,  such  as  apples,  pears,  peaches, 
plums,  cherries,  grapes,  and  diverse 
berries  are  often  cooked,  in  many  ways; 
but  when  ripe,  sound  and  of  good  stock,  they  usually 
"taste"  better  raw  than  cooked.  We  do  not  boil  our 
melons,  nuts,  or  radishes,  nor,  as  a  rule,  our  celery  and 
green-salad  leaves  of  various  kinds,  or  our  cucumbers. 
Tomatoes  make  an  excellent  stew,  but  they  are  better 
still  sliced  raw,  with  vinegar  and  oil,  and  best  of  all 
eaten  out  of  hand  right  off  the  plant. 

These  things  nearly  everybody  knows.  Many,  how- 
ever, are  not  aware  that  the  best  thing  about  a  cabbage 
is  the  core,  eaten  raw,  and  that  carrots,  turnips,  and 

117 


ii8  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

particularly  peas,  when  young  and  tender,  are  far  better 
raw  than  cooked.  Raw  carrots  taste  a  little  like  celery. 
One  of  my  chief  delights  when  on  a  farm  is  to  stroll 
about  the  garden  and  orchard,  sampling  the  various 
vegetables,  berries,  and  fruits  just  before  breakfast. 

A  tolerable  case  might  thus  be  made  out  for  those 
faddists  who  preach  the  gospel  of  raw  food.  Like  all 
fads,  it  is  nevertheless  foolish.  Were  we  to  accept  it, 
we  might  still  eat  sun-dried  meat,  or  ham,  sausages, 
and  fish  thoroughly  smoked,  but  we  would  hardly  care 
to  eat  raw  bacon,  or  veal,  or  mutton,  or  poultry,  or 
beef  (though  a  "beefsteak  a  la  Tartare"  is  edible  when 
buried  under  diverse  "trimmings"  from  the  delicatessen 
store).  I  should  like  to  see  a  faddist  eat  a  raw  potato 
or  beet,  or  a  plateful  of  raw  pumpkin,  squash,  or  beans ! 

Were  we  to  live  on  raw  foods  altogether,  we  might 
survive  to  tell  the  tale,  but  we  should  have  to  give  up 
that  infinite  variety  which  is  the  chief  spice  of  our  diet. 
At  the  same  time  one  of  the  great  arts  of  civilization 
would  vanish  from  the  earth — an  art  which  does  as 
much  to  distinguish  us  from  animals  as  the  fine  arts 
do — ^more  so,  in  fact,  for  birds  sing  and  beavers  build 
houses,  but  no  bird  or  other  animal  ever  cooks  its  food. 

FLAVOR   AS    THE    GUIDING    PRINCIPLE. 

"Cookery  is  an  art  which  almost  more  than  any 
other  has  civilized  mankind,"  as  President  E.  B.  Tylor 


Before  breakfast  in  the  garden 


120  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

of  the  British  Anthropological  Association  has  truly 
said. 

Nor  is  it  only  an  art;  it  is  also  a  science — or  rather, 
it  is  becoming  a  science.  From  time  immemorial  cooks 
have,  by  instinct  or  accident,  often  done  the  right  thing; 
but  in  the  absence  of  a  guiding  principle,  scientifically 
formulated,  they  have  much  more  frequently  made  a 
mess  of  it. 

There  are  four  reasons  for  cooking  food :  to  sterilize 
it;  to  make  it  more  nutritious;  to  make  it  more  easily 
digestible;  and  to  improve  or  vary  its  Flavor. 

Cooking  destroys  the  germs  of  typhoid  and  other 
diseases  which  may  lurk  in  food  products,  and  it  also 
retards  the  general  decomposition  which  may  result  in 
ptomaine  poisoning. 

It  has  long  been  believed  that  raw  or  semi-raw  meat 
is  more  nutritious  than  meat  which  has  been  moder- 
ately cooked;  but  this  is  not  true.  It  is  true,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  in  the  ordinary  methods  of  cooking 
there  is  often  a  considerable  loss  of  nutriment.  The 
United  States  Department  of  Agriculture  has  had  a 
number  of  experiments  made  to  place  this  question  on 
a  scientific  basis.  ^  Much  remains  to  be  done,  but  in 
the  end  it  will  doubtless  be  found  that  there  is  no  ap- 
preciable loss  if  French  methods  are  followed. 

1  See  Bulletins  Nos.  34,  141,  162,  193.  A  convenient  summary  of  the 
results  reached,  up  to  1911,  may  be  found  in  J.  Alan  Murray's  "The 
Economy  of  Food,"  New  York:  D.  Appleton  &  Co. 


SAVORY    COOKING  121 

That  cooking  makes  most  foods  more  digestible  it  is 
needless  to  prove.  Even  fruits  which  taste  better  raw, 
digest  more  readily  when  cooked.  A  great  many  per- 
sons who  cannot,  for  instance,  eat  apples,  find  them  not 
only  agreeable  but  easily  assimilated  and  most  bene- 
ficial to  health  when  stewed  or  baked.  Cereals  (par- 
ticularly oatmeal)  and  many  vegetables  and  meats 
need  cooking — sometimes  hours  of  it  to  make  them 
easy  to  masticate  and  digest. 

The  main  object  of  cooking^  however^  is  to  preserve 
and  develop  the  countless  savors  latent  in  good  raw 
material ^  to  combine  them  or  to  add  others  where  the 
material  is  deficient  in  natural  Flavor. 

This  is  the  guiding  principle  to  the  science  of  cook- 
ery. Strange  to  say,  there  are  cook  books  in  which  the 
word  Flavor  is  not  to  be  found !  The  recipes  given  in 
such  books  may  be  correct,  but  to  follow  them  me- 
chanically is  like  playing  the  notes  of  a  piano  piece 
without  knowing  anything  about  expression  marks. 
Flavor  is  the  soul  of  food  as  expression  is  the  soul  of 
music. 

Born  cooks  know  this  instinctively  and  act  on  it. 
But  cooks  can  also  be  made.  Tremendous  improve- 
ment could  be  effected  in  our  kitchens  in  a  short  time 
by  attending  to  the  elements  of  the  Science  of  Savory 
Cooking,  long  since  discovered,  but  usually  ignored. 

Much  has  been  written  about  the  wastefulness  in  our 
households.     A  French  family,  we  have  been  told  a 


122  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

thousand  times,  could  live  on  what  is  thrown  away  in 
an  American  kitchen.  True;  but  as  long  as  we  enjoy 
our  present  national  prosperity  this  waste  is  a  far  less 
deplorable  matter  than  the  criminal  way  in  which  igno- 
rant or  careless  persons  habitually  denature  our  best 
food  materials  by  allowing  the  healthful  Flavors  to 
escape  during  the  process  of  cooking. 

THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    SOUP    MAKING    AND    EATING. 

In  each  of  the  processes  of  cooking,  such  as  boiling, 
roasting,  frying,  stewing,  steaming,  baking,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  observe  certain  elementary  rules  which  can 
easily  be  taught. 

Boiling.  In  boiling  meat,  everything  depends  on 
whether  the  object  is  to  keep  the  juices  within  the  meat 
or  to  get  them  out ;  in  other  words,  whether  the  meat  is 
intended  to  be  eaten,  or  simply  used  for  the  purpose  of 
making  a  rich,  flavorful  bouillon  or  soup.  If  the  meat 
is  to  be  eaten,  it  is  plunged  at  once  into  boiling  water, 
which  coagulates  the  protein  on  the  outside  and  pre- 
vents the  loss  of  the  juices.  The  bigger  the  chunk,  the 
better. 

If  the  meat  is  not  to  be  eaten,  it  is  put  into  a  pot  of 
cold  water  and  the  temperature  is  raised  gradually.  In 
this  case  the  richest  broth  is  obtained  if  the  meat  is 
cut  up  into  small  pieces  and  cooked  a  long  time. 

It  is  almost  universally  believed  that  "soup  meat" 
(usually  beef)  boiled  in  this  way  has  lost  most  of  its 


SAVORY    COOKING  123 

nutritive  qualities  and  that  these  have  gone  into  the 
soup.  In  reality,  it  is  all  a  matter  of  Flavor.  We  pre- 
fer the  soup  to  the  meat  boiled  in  it,  merely  because 
the  Flavor  of  the  meat  has  been  transferred  to  the  soup. 
The  nutritive  matter  remains  in  the  meat;  the  soup 
stock  has  very  little  of  it — from  one  to  five  per  cent, 
only.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  as  Dr.  Wiley  points 
out,  that  ''the  soup  stock  is  valuable  as  a  condiment 
and  flavoring  and  not  as  a  joodT 

The  same  is  true  of  beef  extract,  which  is  simply  a 
concentrated  soup  stock — thirty-four  pounds  of  beef 
boiled  down  into  one  pound. 

Here  we  have  the  whole  philosophy  of  soup  making 
and  soup  eating,  reduced  to  the  simplest  terms.  Soup 
contains  the  essence  of  meat  Flavor,  and  we  eat  it  at 
the  beginning  of  a  meal  because  this  Flavor  stimulates 
the  appetite,  which  in  turn  causes  the  digestive  juices 
to  flow  freely.  The  richer  the  soup  is  in  Flavor,  the 
more  it  stimulates  the  appetite.  The  beef  extracts  sold 
in  little  jars  are,  if  made  by  reputable  firms,  among  the 
most  valuable  appetizers — invaluable,  in  fact,  in  a 
country  in  which  the  science  of  making  savory  soup  is 
so  little  understood  or  practised  as  it  is  in  the  United 
States. 

The  makers  of  meat  extracts  have  laid  themselves 
open  to  censure  by  making  extravagant  claims  as  to 
the  nutritive  properties  of  these  extracts,  instead  of 
dwelling  principally  on  their  importance  as  flavorful 


124  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

appetizers.  This,  to  be  sure,  they  could  hardly  have 
been  expected  to  do  until  the  all-importance  of  Flavor 
in  Food  had  been  impressed  on  the  public  in  a  special 
monograph. 

WHEREIN    LIES    THE    VALUE    OF    VEGETABLES? 

Except  for  the  making  of  soup  stock,  and  of  ex- 
tracts and  beef  tea,  boiling  of  meats  is  not  much  in 
vogue  in  America.  Vegetables,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  usually  boiled — and  thereby  hangs  a  melancholy 
tale. 

Boiled  they  should  be,  but  not  in  the  careless,  un- 
scientific way  generally  practised  in  America  and  Eng- 
land, where  they  usually  are  served  at  table  entirely 
denatured,  that  is,  deprived  of  their  Flavors. 

Villainous  and  idiotic  are  the  only  adjectives  that 
adequately  describe  this  method  of  cooking  vegetables, 
for  their  utility  as  food  lies  chiefly  in  these  Flavors,  the 
nutritive  value  of  green  vegetables  being  small. 

How  small  it  is  may  be  seen  by  the  analysis  given  in 
Dr.  W^iley's  "Foods  and  their  Adulteration,"  Part  VI, 
where  he  says,  for  example :  "There  is  very  little  nour- 
ishment obtained  in  eating  a  turnip  which  perhaps  is 
95  per  cent,  water, — ^yet  its  palatability,  its  condi- 
mental  character,  and  its  general  salutary  effect  upon 
digestion  is  such  as  to  make  it  worth  while  to  pay  even 
a  high  price  in  proportion  to  its  nutriment." 

If  the  reader  wants  more  evidence  on  this  point  he 


SAVORY    COOKING  125 

may  find  it  in  Sir  Henry  Thompson's  valuable  book, 
Food  and  Feeding.  Speaking  of  "the  entire  cabbage 
tribe  in  great  variety;  lettuces,  endives,  and  cresses; 
spinach,  sea-kale,  asparagus,  celery,  onions,  artichokes, 
and  tomato,"  he  remarks  that  all  these  are  "valuable 
not  so  much  for  nutritive  property,  which  is  not  con- 
siderable, as  for  admixture  with  other  food  chiefly  on 
account  of  salts  which  they  contain,  and  for  their 
appetizing  aroma  and  Flavor." 

Therefore,  to  boil  green  vegetables  without  the  slight- 
est attempt  to  preserve  or  develop  their  natural  Flavors, 
as  is  almost  universally  done  in  our  country,  is,  I  re- 
peat, villainous  and  idiotic. 

Americans  undoubtedly  eat  too  much  meat.  Preach- 
ing about  the  injuriousness  of  this  excess  may  do  some 
good,  but  a  much  more  effective  way  would  be  to  cook 
vegetables  more  temptingly. 

If  peas  and  string  beans  are  succulent  and  fresh,  they 
are  delicious  when  simply  boiled  in  salted  water.  In 
cities  they  seldom  are  quite  fresh,  and,  as  a  rule,  it  is 
well  to  add  soup  stock  or  butter  to  develop  the  Flavor. 
In  any  case,  it  is  of  importance  that  the  water  should 
be  already  boiling  when  the  vegetables  are  put  in.  If 
this  is  not  the  case,  there  is  a  loss  of  valuable  salts  and 
Flavors.  Some  loss  there  must  always  be;  that  is, 
the  water  always  absorbs  some  of  these  juices  and 
Flavors;  but  note  the  difference.  French  cooks  pre- 
serve this  vegetable  stock,  as  they  do  the  meat  stock, 


126  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

for  diverse  combinations.  Our  cooks  pour  it  down  the 
sink. 

It  is  fortunate  that  the  United  States  Government 
has  undertaken  to  establish  the  principles  of  savory 
cooking  by  scientific  methods,  which  will  lead  to  more 
satisfaction  and  generally  helpful  results  than  the  em- 
pirical, haphazard  methods  hitherto  followed  by  cooks. 

An  interesting  glimpse  into  the  kitchen  laboratories 
of  our  Government  experts  is  given  by  Murray  in  his 
^'Economy  of  Food." 

"It  is  obvious,"  he  says,  "that  the  loss  of  nutrients 
will  be  increased  by  cutting  the  vegetables  into  small 
pieces,  and  by  soaking  them  in  cold  water  before  cook- 
ing. In  the  case  of  potatoes,  turnips,  and  similar 
products,  the  loss  might  be  greatly  diminished  by  cook- 
ing them  whole  with  the  skins  on,  but  as  a  rule  this 
method  is  not  practicable. 

"These  conclusions  are  confirmed  by  the  experiments 
of  Snyder,^  Frisby,  and  Bryant.  They  found  that  when 
potatoes  were  peeled,  cut  into  pieces  in  the  usual  way, 
and  soaked  in  cold  water  before  boiling  about  half  the 
total  nitrogen — including  about  a  quarter  of  the  true  al- 
buminoids— was  lost.  When  put  into  cold  water  and 
cooked  at  once,  only  about  a  sixth  of  the  total  nitrogen 
— including  a  twelfth  part  of  the  true  albuminoids — 
was  lost.  When  the  potatoes  were  put,  at  once,  into 
boiling  water,  the  loss  was  only  about  half  the  amount 

1  Bulletin  43,  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Agr. 


SAVORY    COOKING  127 

recorded  in  the  last  case;  but,  for  some  reason,  this 
method  is  not  suitable  for  some  kinds  of  potatoes,  as 
they  'go  to  smash'  if  so  treated.  The  loss  from  po- 
tatoes boiled  in  their  skins  was  quite  inconsiderable, 
being  less  than  one  per  cent,  of  the  total  nitrogen. 

'In  boiling  carrots  which  had  been  scraped  and  cut 
into  pieces,  the  amount  of  the  loss  was  found  to  de- 
pend almost  entirely  upon  the  size  of  the  pieces. 
Small  pieces  lost  about  40  per  cent,  of  the  total 
nitrogen  and  26  per  cent,  of  the  sugar.  With  large 
pieces,  the  loss  of  nitrogen  was  about  20  per  cent,  and 
of  sugar,  15  per  cent." 

A  number  of  useful  hints  for  the  practical  cook  are 
supplied  by  these  scientific  experiments. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  in  potatoes  and  beets,  and  in 
dried  vegetables,  like  beans,  corn,  and  peas,  the  propor- 
tion of  nutriment  is  greater  than  in  the  succulent 
greens.  In  the  cooking  of  dried  vegetables  the  preser- 
vation and  development  of  Flavors  is  also  of  great  im- 
portance, with  a  view  especially  to  digestibility.  Un- 
like the  green,  the  dried  vegetables  should  be  cooked  by 
putting  them  into  cold  water;  and  prolonged  cooking 
is  necessary  in  order  to  soften  and  otherwise  prepare 
them  for  the  alimentary  canal. 

Our  benevolent  Government  a  few  years  ago  engaged 
one  of  the  country's  chief  cooking  experts,  Maria  Par- 
loa,  to  write  a  brief  treatise  on  the  Preparation  of 
Vegetables  for  the  Table  for  free  distribution  by  the  De- 


128  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

partment  of  Agriculture  as  Farmers'  Bulletin  N0.256. 
Like  all  these  documents,  it  is  excellent;  in  less  than 
fifty  pages  it  explains  the  best  ways  of  cooking  potatoes, 
beans,  peas,  carrots,  asparagus  and  two-score  more  of 
the  products  of  the  garden;  and  these  pages  are  fol- 
lowed by  others  on  vegetable  soups,  seasoning  and 
sauces  for  vegetables,  and  salads  and  salad  dress- 
ings. 

Every  cook,  urban  as  well  as  rural,  should  have  a 
copy  of  this  pamphlet  and  mark  with  a  red  pencil  the 
more  important  directions.  If  every  cook  in  the 
country  knew  and  practised  only  the  following  direc- 
tions given  in  this  useful  document,  what  a  transforma- 
tion there  would  be  in  our  dining-rooms! 

"All  green  vegetables,  roots,  and  tubers  should  be 
crisp  and  firm  when  put  on  to  cook.  If  for  any  reason 
a  vegetable  has  lost  its  firmness  and  crispness,  it  should 
be  soaked  in  very  cold  water  until  it  becomes  plump 
and  crisp.  With  new  vegetables  this  will  be  only  a 
matter  of  minutes,  while  old  roots  and  tubers  often  re- 
quire many  hours." 

"All  vegetables  should  be  thoroughly  cooked,  but 
the  cooking  should  stop  while  the  vegetable  is  still 
firm."  "Over-cooked  vegetables  are  inferior  in  flavor 
and  often  indigestible."  "Badly  cooked,  water-soaked 
vegetables  very  generally  cause  digestive  disturbances, 
which  are  often  serious."  Cabbage  "is  apt  to  be  in- 
digestible and  cause  flatulence  when  it  is  improperly 


SAVORY    COOKING  129 

cooked.     On  the  other  hand,  it  can  be  cooked  so  that 
it  will  be  delicate  and  digestible." 

Steaming  is  one  of  the  best  ways  of  cooking  vegeta- 
bles. It  is  largely  practised  in  France  and  Germany, 
but  neglected  in  England  as  it  is  in  America.  Po- 
tatoes have  more  of  their  natural  Flavor  when  steamed 
than  when  cooked  any  other  way.  An  English  writer 
says  on  this  point:  "Steaming  has  the  double  advantage 
of  conserving  the  Flavor  and  making  the  food  more  di- 
gestible. Its  only  drawback  is  that  it  takes  more 
time,  and  this  is  probably  the  reason  why  it  has  some- 
what fallen  into  disfavor  in  England." 

BROILING,    ROASTING,     BAKING,    FRYING. 

As  this  volume  is  not  intended  to  be  a  practical  cook- 
book, no  attempt  is  made  to  give  rules  for  all  the 
various  processes  of  cooking  food;  nor  is  it  necessary, 
for  nearly  every  family  owns  a  cook-book  giving  the 
required  directions.  What  I  wish  to  emphasize  is  that 
in  all  these  processes  the  rules  given  by  the  best  chefs 
refer  directly  or  indirectly  to  the  preservation  and  de- 
velopment of  the  food  Flavors.  A  few  brief  para- 
graphs will  suffice  to  prove  this  point. 

Broiling.  As  one  expert  puts  it:  "The  ideal  to 
be  reached  in  broiling  steak  is  to  sear  the  surface  very 
quickly,  so  that  the  juices  which  contain  the  greater 
part  of  the  flavoring  of  the  meat  shall  be  kept  in,  and 
then  to  allow  the  heat  to  penetrate  to  the  inside  until 


130  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

the  whole  mass  is  cooked  to  the  taste  of  the  family.  To 
pass  the  point  where  the  meat  ceases  to  be  puffy  and 
juicy  and  becomes  flat  and  hard  is  very  undesirable, 
as  the  palatahility  is  then  lost.  Exactly  the  same  ideal 
should  be  kept  in  mind  in  broiling  chopped  meat.  If 
this  were  always  done,  hard,  compact,  tasteless  balls  or 
cakes  of  meat  would  be  served  less  often." 

The  three  words  I  have  italicized  show  that  in  this 
case,  as  in  all  others,  my  contention  is  borne  out  that 
Flavor  is  the  guiding  principle  in  all  scientific  cook- 
ing. 

The  use  of  the  gridiron  for  a  broil,  or  "grill,"  as  the 
English  call  it  (after  the  French  griller),  also  imparts 
to  the  meat  a  slightly  burnt  taste  relished  by  epicures. 

Roasting,  Why  is  our  roast  beef  usually  so  insipid 
and  unappetizing? 

Sometimes  the  inferior  quality  of  the  meat  is  to 
blame,  but  more  frequently  our  disappointment  is  due 
to  the  cook's  indolence  or  the  substitution  of  baking  for 
roasting. 

Real  roasting  is  like  broiling  in  so  far  as  it  requires 
exposure  of  the  meat  to  an  open  fire.  It  differs  from 
broiling  in  that  it  also  calls  for  frequent  basting,  that 
is,  taking  up  with  a  spoon  the  fat  which  flows  from  the 
meat  and  pouring  it  over  the  surface,  thus  aiding  the 
initial  searing  in  keeping  in  the  juices,  on  which  the 
Flavor  depends. 

Ordinary  cooks  are  too  lazy  to  baste  and  therefore 


SAVORY    COOKING  131 

this  precious  juice  escapes  into  the  pan,  where  it  is  in 
turn  spoiled  by  a  deluge  of  water  and  an  uncooked  mass 
of  flour,  the  resulting  liquid  being  a  sorry  substitute  for 
real,  savory  gravy. 

In  place  of  roast  meat  most  families  now  have  to 
put  up  with  baked  meat.  Baking  in  an  open  pan  in 
a  modern  range  results  in  the  tainting  of  the  meat  with 
the  disagreeable  flavor  of  charred  fat  spattered  by  the 
cooking  process  against  the  top  and  the  sides  of  the 
oven.  The  oven  being  unventilated,  and  not  easily 
washed,  the  result  is  a  permanent  "oven  taste"  in  the 
roast  beef,  mutton,  veal,  pork,  or  chicken,  which  is 
almost  as  exasperating  to  a  discerning  diner  as  the 
taint  of  cold-storage  poultry. 

This  objectionable  oven  taste  can  be  eliminated  by 
using  a  double  roasting  pan,  which  also  has,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  the  advantage  of  being  self -basting.  A 
conscientious  cook,  who  knows  the  value  of  Flavor 
and  of  real  gravy,  will  nevertheless  look  after  the  bast- 
ing personally. 

The  value  of  gravy  is  far  too  little  understood. 
Nothing  is  more  appetizing  in  association  with  a  good 
plain  roast  than  the  gravy  made  from  its  fat  and  some 
of  its  juices.  In  starting  a  roast  it  is  of  prime  im- 
portance to  expose  the  meat  at  once  to  a  very  high  tem- 
perature so  as  to  sear  the  surface  and  (as  already 
stated)  keep  the  juice  in  the  meat.  But  before  the 
searing  process  is  completed,  enough  of  the  juice  usually 


132  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

escapes  to  make,  in  combination  with  the  fat  which 
continues  to  ooze  out,  a  delicious  gravy. 

The  French  do  not  add  flour  to  gravy ;  if  it  is  added, 
it  should  at  least  be  used  sparingly,  and  cooked  five 
to  eight  minutes  in  the  gravy. 

Frying.  Give  a  dog  a  bad  name,  etc.!  Frying 
has  been  denounced  as  an  invention  of  the  devil, 
a  source  of  countless  digestive  disorders.  As  ordi- 
narily practised  it  fully  deserves  its  evil  repute.  From 
a  dietetic  as  well  as  a  gastronomic  point  of  view  nothing 
could  be  more  objectionable  than  the  fried  steaks,  ba- 
con, potatoes,  and  diverse  deadly  fritters  daily  placed 
on  hundreds  of  thousands  of  American  tables.  But  fry- 
ing on  rational  principles  is  an  entirely  wholesome  and 
most  desirable  branch  of  the  science  of  savory  cooking. 

Success  or  failure  in  this  branch  is  chiefly  a  matter 
of  temperature.  At  the  moment  the  meat,  fish,  or 
vegetable  is  put  into  the  fat,  this  must  be  sufficiently 
hot  to  coagulate  the  surface  so  that  (as  in  the  processes 
of  roasting  or  broiling)  the  juices  with  their  Flavors 
are  kept  within. 

If  the  fat  is  not  hot  enough,  the  food  comes  out 
soaked  with  grease  and  highly  indigestible.  On  the 
other  hand,  care  must  be  taken  that  the  fat  is  not 
scorched.  This  point  is  best  explained  in  one  of  the 
Agricultural  Department's  helpful  publications.^ 

1  "Economical  Use  of  Meat  at  Home,"  by  C.  F.  Langworthy  and 
Caroline  L.  Hunt.     Farmers'  Bulletin  391. 


SAVORY    COOKING  133 

"The  chief  reason  for  the  bad  opinion  in  which  fried 
food  is  held  by  many  is  that  it  almost  always  means 
eating  burnt  fat.  When  fat  is  heated  too  high  it 
splits  up  into  fatty  acids  and  glycerin,  and  from  the 
glycerin  is  formed  a  substance  (acrolein)  which  has  a 
very  irritating  effect  upon  the  mucous  membrane.  All 
will  recall  that  the  fumes  of  scorched  fat  make  the 
eyes  water.  It  is  not  surprising  that  such  a  substance, 
if  taken  into  the  stomach,  should  cause  digestive  dis- 
turbance. Fat  in  itself  is  very  valuable  food,  and  the 
objection  to  fried  foods  because  they  may  be  fat  seems 
illogical." 

The  temperature  required  varies  with  the  different 
foods  and  styles  desired.  On  this  point,  as  well  as  on 
the  relative  merits  of  the  various  baths  to  be  used, 
sufficient  information  is  given  in  cook  books.  The 
best  frying  baths  are  made  of  suet  and  veal  fat,  fresh 
butter,  and  pure  olive  oil.  For  the  sake  of  economy, 
and  variety  in  flavor,  it  is  also  advisable  to  use  the 
drippings  from  fried  bacon,  ham,  or  sausage — but  not 
from  fish. 

In  speaking  of  broiled  meat  I  referred  to  the  slightly 
burnt  taste  which  is  relished  by  epicures — ^somewhat 
as  dissonances  are  by  music-lovers.  In  the  case  of  fried 
and  roast  meats,  properly  browned  on  the  surface,  there 
is  a  somewhat  similar  but  less  dissonant  flavor  which 
comes  from  browning  the  meat  with  fat.  If  the  brown- 
ing has  been  done  scientifically  many  persons  (I  am  one 


134  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

of  them)  prefer  the  outside  slices  of  roast  meat  to  the 
inside. 

COMBINING  THE  FLAVORS  OF  MEATS  AND  VEGETABLES. 

Apart  from  the  adventitious  browned  flavors  just 
referred  to  there  are  in  broiled,  baked,  and  roast  meats 
usually  no  combination  flavors  except  such  as  come 
from  the  butter  and  salt  that  are  added  after  the  meat 
is  done. 

Two  most  important  details  to  know  are  that  if  the 
salt  is  put  on  meat  before  it  is  broiled,  it  allows  the 
juices  to  escape;  but  that  in  frying  a  steak  (which  is 
not  a  barbarism  if  properly  done)  salt  added  at  once 
helps  to  make  a  delicious  gravy. 

In  the  frying  of  meats  or  of  vegetables  (parsnips, 
carrots,  egg  plant,  oyster  plant,  and  particularly  po- 
tatoes) a  desirable  extra  flavor  can  also  be  added  by 
using  the  fat  previously  fried  out  of  bacon,  ham,  or 
sausages,  or  the  fat  from  a  pot-roast  or  the  soup  kettle. 

Endless  possibilities  for  combination  Flavors  are  of- 
fered by  two  of  the  cooking  processes:  boiling  and 
stewing.  The  first  of  these  has  already  been  briefly 
considered  under  the  head  of  the  Philosophy  of  Soup- 
making. 

Slewing  is  not  usually  considered  one  of  the  most 
"high-toned"  of  cooking  processes ;  yet,  if  scientifically 
done — think  of  a  real  Irish  stew! — it  provides  dishes 
second  to  none  in  savoriness — dishes  fit  for  gods,  kings, 


SAVORY    COOKING  135 

and  epicures.  And  a  man  might  live  a  hundred  years 
and  have  a  new  variety  of  stew  every  day,  so 
great  are  the  possible  permutations  and  combinations  of 
vegetables  and  meats. 

More  savory  results  can  often  be  secured  by  stewing 
than  by  any  other  process  of  cooking.  It  is  well- 
known  that  the  "sweetest"  (that  is,  the  most  highly 
flavored)  meat  is  that  near  a  bone.  Moreover,  the 
bone  itself,  thoroughly  cooked,  yields  most  agreeable 
flavors  of  its  own.  Now,  in  making  stews,  the  bony 
parts  (shoulder,  neck,  end-pieces  of  ribs)  are  used,  and 
the  prolonged  cooking  called  for  by  this  process  results 
in  extracting  all  the  sweetness  from  the  bones  and  the 
meat  nearest  them.  Boiling  yields  similar  results,  but 
the  savors  pass  into  the  liquid,  leaving  the  meat  almost 
flavorless,  whereas  in  a  stew  the  flavors  enrich  the 
gravy,  the  vegetables,  and  the  meat  alike,  in  a  particu- 
larly appetizing  manner. 

In  ordinary  stewing — the  method  of  preparing  the 
French  boeuf  a  la  mode,  or  the  Irish  stew — the  meat 
and  the  vegetables  are  put  into  water  and  allowed  to 
simmer  slowly. 

A  more  elaborate  method  of  stewing  is  known  as 
braising.  In  this  process  a  strong  liquor  of  vegetables 
and  meats  is  used  in  place  of  water,  and  it  is  usually 
advised  that  both  the  vegetables  and  the  meat  be 
fried  in  a  little  fat  before  being  placed  in  the  pot  to 
braise. 


136  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

This  does  not  seem  altogether  scientific,  because  in 
a  stew  the  object  is  not  to  keep  in  the  juices  but  to  get 
them  out  and  combine  them. 

A  less  objectionable  way,  which  some  consider  the 
last  refinement  necessary  to  produce  a  first  rate  braise 
is  thus  described:  "Have  well-fitted  to  the  braise- 
pot  a  sunk  copper  or  iron  cover,  in  which  some  hot  coals 
or  charcoal  are  placed,  in  order  to  transmit  downwards 
a  scorching  heat  to  the  top  of  the  portion  which  is  un- 
covered by  the  liquid  in  the  pot  below.  In  this  case  it 
is  usual  to  cover  the  portion,  especially  if  a  fowl,  with 
a  piece  of  white  paper,  which  serves  to  shield  a  delicate 
morsel  from  a  too  fierce  heat."  ^ 

SAVORY    FOOD    FOR    EVERYBODY. 

It  is  to  be  greatly  regretted  that  in  America,  as  in 
England,  the  process  of  making  diverse  savory  stews  is 
so  little  understood.  For  not  only  do  such  dishes  ap- 
peal to  the  most  fastidious  epicures,  but  a  thorough 
and  general  knowledge  of  correct  stewing  would  go 
far  toward  solving  the  problem  of  providing  savory 
food  for  everybody. 

Too  many  Americans  look  on  the  ability  to  buy  the 
most  expensive  cuts  of  butcher's  meats  as  the  gauge  of 
prosperity,  if  not  respectability.     Now,  the  difference 

1  Sir  Henry  Thompson  devotes  six  valuable  pages  of  his  "Food  and 
Feeding"  (Chap.  V.  and  Appendix)  to  the  subject  of  stewing  and 
braising. 


SAVORY    COOKING  137 

between  these  expensive  cuts  and  the  cheaper  ones  lies 
much  less  in  their  nutritive  value  than  in  their  texture 

and  flavor. 

Inasmuch  as  I  am  preaching  throughout  this  volume 
that  the  Flavor  is  all-important,  this  ought  to  justify 
the  general  scramble  for  the  more  expensive  cuts,  but 
it  does  not;  for  in  truth  these  differences  in  Flavor  and 
tenderness  can  be  obliterated  by  skilful  cooking,  espe- 
cially in  the  stew  pan. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  ''the  real  superiority  of  a 
good  cook  lies  not  so  much  in  the  preparation  of  expen- 
sive or  fancy  dishes  as  in  the  attractive  preparation  of 
inexpensive  dishes  for  every  day  and  in  the  skilful 
combination  of  flavors ^ 

Has  not  the  French  chef  been  praised  a  thousand 
times  for  his  alleged  ability  to  prepare  a  host  of  tooth- 
some dishes  from  thistletops^ 

The  Government  at  Washington,  which  so  kindly 
looks  after  our  welfare  in  many  ways,  has  not  over- 
looked this  matter.  In  a  pamphlet  (to  which  refer- 
ence has  already  been  made,)  issued  as  Farmers' 
Bulletin  391  for  free  distribution,  and  entitled  "Eco- 
nomical Use  of  Meat  in  the  Home,"  two  of  the  Gov-  . 
ernment's  experts  in  nutrition,  Dr.  C.  F.  Langworthy 
and  Caroline  L.  Hunt,  have  given  forty-three  pages  of 
practical  information  and  advice,  which,  if  generally 
heeded,  would  not  only  go  far  toward  solving  the  high- 
cost-of-food  problem,  but  toward  making  us  a  gastro- 


138  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

nomic  nation.  It  is  a  document  which  cannot  be  too 
highly  commended  to  the  attention  of  all  who  are  in- 
terested in  cooking  and  eating. 

The  object  of  the  pamphlet  is  to  show  that  the  num- 
ber of  "tasty"  dishes  which  a  good  cook  can  make  out 
of  the  cheaper  cuts  of  meat  or  meat  "left  over"  is 
almost  endless.  Directions  are  given  for  developing 
the  natural  flavor  of  meat  even  in  the  cheapest  cuts 
and  for  further  heightening  the  savors  by  the  judicious 
use  of  condiments  and  sauces;  and  these  general  direc- 
tions are  followed  by  a  number  of  special  recipes,  for 
making  stews  with  dumplings;  meat  pies;  meat  with 
macaroni,  or  beans,  or  eggs;  meat  with  vinegar,  casse- 
role cookery;  pounded  or  chopped  meat,  etc. 

In  conclusion  the  authors  refer  to  the  strange  preju- 
dice which  some  housekeepers  seem  to  have  against 
economizing  in  the  ways  suggested  by  them;  upon 
which  they  comment  that  surely  "the  intelligent  house- 
keeper should  take  as  much  pride  in  setting  a  good 
table  at  a  low  price  as  the  manufacturer  does  in  lessen- 
ing the  cost  of  production  in  his  factory." 

The  trouble  with  most  cookbooks  is  that  they  are  so 
bulky  that  few  have  the  patience  to  wade  through 
them  to  get  at  the  general  remarks  to  be  found  here 
and  there.  This  Government  bulletin  is  so  short, 
and  yet  covers  so  much  ground,  that  it  is  likely  to  do 
a  vast  amount  of  missionary  work  in  American 
kitchens. 


SAVORY    COOKING  139 

MEAT    EATING    OF    THE    FUTURE. 

Boycotting  the  butchers  may  be  an  effective  way  of 
temporarily  lowering  the  price  of  meat,  but  to  make 
it  permanently  cheaper  another  method  must  be  fol- 
lowed :  we  must  eat  less  and  thus  decrease  the  demand. 

This  we  can  do  without  depriving  ourselves  of  any 
of  the  coveted  pleasures  of  the  table.  We  like  to  eat 
meats  because  we  enjoy  their  Flavors;  but  it  is  possible 
and  easy  to  enjoy  these  same  Flavors  in  a  way  which 
makes  our  meals  not  only  more  economical  but  also 
more  nutritious. 

This  method  has  long  been  in  use,  but  not  to  such 
an  extent  as  it  should  be.  It  consists  in  extending  the 
■flavor  of  meat  to  other  material  which  costs  less  but 
has  a  higher  nutritive  value. 

The  most  valuable  pages  of  the  Bulletin  referred  to 
in  the  last  section  are  those  exemplifying  the  diverse 
methods  of  thus  extending  the  flavor  of  meat.  The 
recipes  are  preceded  by  these  illuminating  words : 

"Common  household  methods  of  extending  the  meat 
flavor  through  a  considerable  quantity  of  material 
which  would  otherwise  be  lacking  in  distinctive  taste 
are  to  serve  the  meat  with  dumplings,  generally  in  the 
dish  with  it,  to  combine  the  meat  with  crusts,  as  in  meat 
pies  or  meat  rolls,  or  to  serve  the  meat  on  toast  and 
biscuits.  Borders  of  rice,  hominy,  or  mashed  po- 
tatoes are  examples  of  the  same  principles  applied  in 


140  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

different  ways.  By  serving  some  preparation  of  flour, 
rice,  hominy,  or  other  food  rich  in  starch  with  the  meat 
we  get  a  dish  which  in  itself  approaches  nearer  to  the 
balanced  ration  than  meat  alone  and  one  in  which 
the  meat  flavor  is  extended  through  a  large  amount 
of  the  material." 

Dr.  Wiley,  in  discussing  this  aspect  of  the  question, 
goes  so  far  as  to  express  the  conviction  that  "the  meat 
eating  of  the  future  may  not  be  regarded  so  much  as  a 
necessity  as  it  has  in  the  past,  but  that  meats  will  he 
used  more  as  condimental  substances  than  as  staple 
foods. 

Meats  as  condiments  rather  than  as  foods !  There  is 
a  revolutionary  doctrine  for  you ! — a  doctrine  subversive 
of  all  the  beliefs  and  practices  of  the  past!  Yet  it  is 
a  doctrine  which  meat-eaters  may  accept  calmly  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  what  delights  them  in  meat  is  its 
Flavor,  and  that  even  with  a  minimum  quantity  of 
meat  this  flavor  can  be  preserved,  developed,  and  ex- 
tended in  the  diverse  ways  hinted  at  in  the  preceding 
pages. 

In  view  of  this  truth,  meat-eaters  should  ponder 
what  Dr.  Wiley  says  in  favor  of  our  eating  less  meat 
than  we  do  and  using  it  as  a  condiment : 

"In  all  meat,  for  instance,  that  costs  twenty-five  cents 
a  pound,  such  as  steaks,  there  is  over  one-third  or  a 
half  of  it  which  is  inedible,  so  that  the  edible  portion 
really   costs   double   the   amount.     On   the  contrary, 


SAVORY    COOKING  141 

when  a  pound  of  flour  or  maize  is  purchased,  the  price 
of  which  is  perhaps  only  one-eighth  that  of  meat,  the 
whole  of  it  is  edible.  Thus,  from  the  mere  point  of 
economy  as  well  as  nutrition,  the  superiority  of  cereals 
and  other  vegetable  products  is  at  once  evident.  On 
the  one  hand,  a  cereal  is  almost  a  complete  food  contain- 
ing all  the  elements  necessary  to  nutrition,  and  it  costs 
only  a  few  cents  a  pound.  On  the  other  hand,  a  steak 
or  roast  is  only  a  partial  food  and  it  costs  much  more 
than  cereals." 

THE   FOLLY  OF  VEGETARIANISM. 

The  vegetarians  who  would  banish  all  meat  from  our 
diet  must  not  infer  from  the  remarks  just  quoted  that 
Dr.  Wiley  endorses  their  doctrine.  He  is  an  epicure  as 
well  as  a  man  of  science,  and  no  epicure  will  ever  advo- 
cate exclusive  vegetarianism.  While  conceding  that 
man  "cannot  be  nourished  by  meat  alone,"  but  that  he 
"can  live  and  flourish  without  meat,"  he  holds  that  he 
"is  an  omnivorous  animal  both  by  evolution  and  neces- 
sarily by  heredity" ;  and  he  has  written  much,  and  con 
amore^  about  the  pleasures  of  the  table  provided  by 
meats  cooked  in  savory  ways. 

It  is  needless  to  dwell  on  the  fact  that  most  persons 
find  meats  more  appetizing  and  digestible  than  any 
other  foods,  and  that  it  would  therefore  be  ridiculous 
as  well  as  harmful  to  banish  them  from  our  tables. 

The  chief  argument  against  vegetarianism  is  that 


142  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

it  would  deprive  us  of  thousands  of  the  delicious  plain 
or  combination  Flavors  which  make  our  food  appetiz- 
ing and  digestible;  and  this  argument  is  so  irrefutable, 
so  crushing,  that  not  another  word  need  be  wasted  on 
the  subject.  The  Flavor  Test  settles  it  for  all  time,  as 
it  does  everything  relating  to  food. 

WHEN    TO    USE    CONDIMENTS    AND    SAUCES. 

Salt  has  been  defined  humorously  as  that  which,  if 
not  put  in  the  soup,  spoils  it. 

Potatoes,  eggs,  and  many  other  foods  are  thus 
"spoiled"  if  eaten  without  a  pinch  of  salt.  It  is,  in 
fact,  added  to  most  cooked  foods,  by  whatever  methods 
prepared. 

Bread  requires  a  considerable  amount  of  salt  to 
make  it  tasty.  American  bakers  usually  put  in  too 
little,  and  that  is  not  only  one  of  the  reasons  why  our 
bread  is  so  inferior  to  the  best  European,  but  explains 
the  prevalence  of  the  habit  of  eating  salted  butter, 
which,  as  previously  pointed  out,  is  as  great  a  gas- 
tronomic barbarism  as  it  would  be  to  eat  salted  ice 
cream  or  drink  salted  coffee  or  tea,  although  under 
the  circumstances  it  is  more  pardonable  than  it  would 
be  if  the  bakers  were  not  such  bunglers. 

In  many  countries  some  of  the  most  important  condi- 
ments— salt,  sugar,  vinegar,  mustard,  and  pepper — are 
placed  on  the  table  so  that  every  one  may  season  his 
food  to  suit  his  individual  taste.     Yet  in  most  cases 


SAVORY    COOKING  143 

these  condiments  do  not  give  such  good  results  when 
used  at  table  as  when  added  to  the  food  while  it  is 
cooking. 

It  is  well  known  that  nothing  so  exasperates  a  French 
cook  as  to  see  some  one  (Americans  and  Englishmen 
are  the  chief  sinners)  take  a  salt  shaker  in  one  hand, 
a  pepper  box  in  the  other,  and  sprinkle  their  contents 
over  the  dish  he  has  prepared,  without  even  trying  to 
find  out  whether  he  had  properly  seasoned  it  in  the 
kitchen. 

Our  addiction  to  such  a  habit  is,  of  course,  a  lamenta- 
ble confession  that  our  cooks  usually  know  not  how  to 
season  food.  It  comes  to  us  generally  in  such  an  in- 
sipid condition  that  we  take  it  for  granted  that  we 
must  do  something  to  make  it  palatable. 

Apart  from  the  table  condiments  just  named  there 
are  many  others  which  are  usually  reserved  for  the 
kitchen.  Among  these  are  allspice,  bay  leaf,  capers, 
celery  seed,  cinnamon,  cloves,  curry,  garlic,  onions, 
ginger,  nutmeg,  sage,  thyme.  Also,  a  great  variety  of 
bottled  sauces  and  of  flavoring  extracts,  such  as  the 
essences  of  vanilla,  lemon,  almonds,  etc. 

At  the  risk  of  wearying  the  reader  by  seeming  always 
to  harp  on  the  same  string,  I  must  call  attention  to  the 
fact  that,  with  the  sole  important  exception  of  sugar, 
all  these  diverse  condiments  have  practically  no  direct 
nutritive  value  but  are  used  the  world  over  simply  be- 
cause  of  their  agreeable  Flavors, 


144  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

If  they  lose  these  Flavors — as  they  do  if  their  volatile 
essences  escape,  or  if  they  are  adulterated  (which  is 
frequent,  because  so  easy)  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to 
throw  them  into  the  garbage  pail. 

Greater  even  than  the  number  of  spices  and  condi- 
ments is  that  of  sauces.  These,  also,  are  of  two  kinds : 
some  of  them,  like  tomato,  walnut,  or  mushroom 
catsups,  Worcestershire  sauce,  pickles,  and  tobasco, 
are  served  at  table,  while  another  very  large  class  of 
sauces  is  usually  made  fresh  in  the  kitchen  for  each 
meal. 

All  of  these  sauces — once  more  it  must  be  parroted — 
like  the  spices  and  condiments  just  discussed,  are 
valued  solely  because  of  their  Flavors — their  impor- 
tance to  the  Science  of  Savory  Cooking. 

One  of  the  most  important  branches  of  this  science 
relates  to  the  proper  use  of  sauces  and  condiments. 

Many  persons  commit  the  gastronomic  sin  of  pour- 
ing a  bottled  sauce  over  a  plate  of  meat  or  fish  without 
previously  ascertaining  whether  it  needs  any  seasonr 
ing. 

Surely,  among  all  the  food  Flavors,  nothing  is  more 
delicious  than  the  natural  savor  of  fresh  sole  or  salmon, 
or  a  juicy  steak  or  chop  just  off  the  grill.  To  put 
any  kind  of  sauce — be  it  the  best  in  the  world — on  such 
a  dish  is  as  unpardonable  as  it  would  be  to  pour  cologne 
over  a  bunch  of  fragrant  violets. 

It  is  when  the  fish  is  a  trifle  "tired,"  or  the  meat 


SAVORY    COOKING  145 

without  much  flavor  of  its  own,  as  so  often  happens, 
that  these  commercial  sauces  come  to  the  rescue.  Used 
only  on  such  occasions,  they  have  their  value ;  and  they 
are  also  desirable  because  of  the  variety  they  supply  in 
the  combination  of  flavors. 

The  French  make  hardly  any  use  of  bottled  sauces; 
theirs  are  domestic,  made  in  their  own  kitchens,  and 
they  attach  more  importance  to  them  than  to  anything 
else  in  culinary  art. 

"Sauces,  by  the  care  and  labor  they  require,  by  the 
costly  sacrifices  which  they  necessarily  involve,  ought  to 
be  considered  as  the  essential  basis  of  good  cookery," 
according  to  Dubois-Bernard.  "A  man  is  never  a  good 
cook,"  he  adds,  "if  he  does  not  possess  a  perfect  knowl- 
edge of  sauces,  and  if  he  has  not  made  a  special  study 
of  the  methodical  principles  on  which  their  perfection 
depends." 

The  sauces  provided  in  Parisian  restaurants  and  pri- 
vate houses  are  certainly  delicious;  yet  the  French  often 
err — and  that  is  almost  their  only  serious  gastronomic 
fault — in  sacrificing  to  them  the  delicious  natural 
Flavors  of  diverse  prime  meats,  just  as  Americans  and 
Englishmen  do  by  pouring  on  their  bottled  sauces. 

Butter  has  among  its  many  virtues  that  of  develop- 
ing the  natural  Flavors  of  meats  and  vegetables  and 
may  therefore  often  be  used  as  a  sauce  in  plain  cook- 
ing a  I'Anglaise.  But,  except  for  occasional  variety, 
other  sauces  should  be  allowed  to  assert  themselves 


146  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

over  the  natural  food  flavors  only  when  these  are  not  of 
the  best. 

COOK    BOOKS. 

Theodore  Child — an  American  gastronomic  mission- 
ary who  unfortunately  died  young  while  traveling  in 
Persia — remarks  in  his  book,  Delicate  Feasting^  that 
while  there  are  hundreds  of  cook  books,  many  of  them 
admirable  in  their  way,  and  bought  by  many,  few  are 
read  or  used,  for  the  reason  that  most  of  them  consist 
of  a  vast  number  of  recipes,  and  "a  cook  must  be  al- 
ready very  learned  in  his  art  in  order  to  know  how  to 
use  them  with  advantage." 

In  other  words,  these  books  fail  to  explain  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  art  of  cooking — the  ways  of  preserving, 
developing,  and  combining  Flavors — as  I  have  at- 
tempted to  do  in  this  chapter. 

There  are  exceptions,  and  the  best  of  these,  so  far  as 
I  know,  is  Mary  Ronald's  Century  Cook  Book  in  which 
various  methods  of  cooking  are  explained  lucidly,  so 
that  those  who  boil,  fry,  broil,  and  so  on,  not  only  may 
know  what  to  do  but  why  to  do  it  thus  and  not  other- 
wise. The  different  sections,  on  meats,  fish,  vegetables, 
entrees,  breads,  desserts,  etc.,  all  have  prefatory  pages 
of  most  useful  condensed  information. 

A  fairly  complete  list  of  the  best  cook  books  and 
other  treatises  on  gastronomic  topics  may  be  found  in 
EUwanger's  Pleasures  of  the  Table, 


SAVOR  YCOOKING  147 

No  fewer  than  2,500  books  and  brochures,  mostly 
French,  are  listed  in  George's  Vicaire's  Bibliographie 
Gastronomique. 

Probably  the  best  and  most  widely  used  of  the 
French  cook  books  are  those  of  Urbain-Dubois.  There 
are  seven  of  them :  Cuisine  Classique^  Cuisine  Artistique^ 
Grand  Livre  des  Fatissiers  et  des  Confiseurs^  Patisserie 
D^Aujourd'hui^  Cuisine  D'Aujourd'hui^  Ecole  des 
Cuisiniers,  and  La  Cuisine  de  tous  les  Pays,  which  in- 
cludes recipes  of  all  the  nations  who  know  how  to 
eat. 

To  another  French  classic,  Richardin's  La  Cuisine 
Francaise  (L'Arl  du  Bien  Manger)  with  its  2,000 
recettes,  its  menus  of  historic  as  well  as  gastronomic  in- 
terest, I  shall  refer  in  the  next  chapter. 

The  Germans  and  Austrians  not  only  have  books  on 
the  special  ways  of  preparing  food  prevalent  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  country,  but  books  about  the  special- 
ties of  other  countries,  such  as  the  making  of  marmalade 
in  the  English  way,  etc. 

The  author  of  Die  Kunst  des  Essens,  Emil  Weissen- 
turn,  took  the  trouble  to  make  lists  of  the  still  surviv- 
ing cook  books  of  various  countries.  Of  17  written  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  10  were  Latin,  1  English,  while 
Germany,  Italy  and  France  each  contributed  2.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  Latin  was  still  in  the  lead  with  42, 
followed  by  Germany  with  30  and  France  with  21. 
Italy  contributed  16,  Spain  5,  Greece  2,  England  2. 


148  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

In  the  seventeenth  century  France  heads  the  list  with 
104  books;  Germany  printed  39,  31  were  in  Latin,  18 
Italian,  10  English,  7  Dutch,  1  Portuguese,  1  Swedish. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  Germany  comes  to  the  fore 
with  96,  France  following  with  60  and  England  with 
34;  14  are  in  Latin,  11  Dutch,  5  Italian,  4  Spanish, 
3  Swedish. 

In  the  nineteenth  century  Germany's  lead  is  still 
more  remarkable — 374  books  as  against  152  con- 
tributed by  France.  England  makes  a  spurt  with  118. 
Italy  rises  to  15;  Sweden  contributes  10,  Holland  8, 
Poland  7,  while  Latin  survives  with  7. 

Of  recent  English  and  American  books  that  have 
come  to  me  for  review  I  liked  particularly  Nicolas 
Soyer's  Standard  Cookery^  Marvin  H.  Neil's  How  to 
Cook  in  Casserole  Dishes  and  Practical  Cooking  and 
Serving^  by  Janet  McKenzie  Hill,  which  is  a  com- 
plete manual  of  not  only  how  to  cook  food,  but  how 
to  select  and  serve  it.  The  author  is  the  editor  of  the 
"Boston  Cooking  School  Magazine,"  and  she  has  a 
great  deal  of  interesting  and  valuable  information  to 
impart. 

In  1911  Soyer's  Paper  Bag  Cookery  was  published. 
In  it  the  famous  chef  who  originated  paper  bag  cook- 
ery— which  has  many  advantages  provided  the  right 
kind  of  paper  is  used — explained  his  method.  His 
Standard  Cookery  includes  the  substance  of  the  smaller 
book  while  at  the  same  time  covering  all  the  branches 


SAVORY    COOKING  149 

of  cooking,  with  over  four  hundred  pages  of  menus. 
Hors-d'CEuvres  are  here  treated  more  fully  than  in  any 
other  English  book,  fifteen  pages  being  given  to  them. 
No  fewer  than  seventy  pages  are  given  to  this  subject 
in  Escoffier's  excellent  Le  Guide  Culinaire, 


^-^ 


Chafing  dish  cooking 


French  raffinement  is  shown  in  many  of  Soyer's  reci- 
pes. Under  "Fried  Eggs,"  for  example  the  average 
American  cook  will  read  with  astonishment  that  they 
should  be  dealt  with  one  at  a  time  and  that,  with  a 
wooden  spoon,  the  yolk  should  be  quickly  covered  up 
with  the  solidified  portions  of  the  white  in  order  to  keep 


150  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

the  former  soft.  Imagine  Bridget  taking  so  much 
trouble.  She  might,  perhaps,  be  induced  to  heed  these 
directions  in  making  an  omelette :  ''Heat  the  pan  un- 
til nearly  a  brown  color.  This  will  not  only  lend  an 
exquisite  taste  to  the  omelette  but  will  be  found  to  en- 
sure the  perfect  setting  of  the  eggs."  Such  seeming 
trifles  make  perfection. 

Casserole  Cookery  is  quite  important  enough  to  have 
a  book  to  itself;  it  is  the  cookery  of  the  future,  and 
Mme.  Neil's  monograph  of  252  pages  should  be,  like 
the  Century  Cook  Book  and  Soyer's  Standard  Cookery^ 
or  Mme.  Hill's  book,  in  every  kitchen. 

In  French  restaurants  more  is  always  charged  for 
casserole  dishes  than  for  others  and  they  are  decidedly 
worth  it.  The  Flavor  of  food  is  particularly  rich  and 
appetizing  when  it  has  been  cooked  slowly  in  earthen- 
ware pots.  For  braising,  pot  roasting,  and  stewing, 
which  are  slow-cooking  processes,  the  casserole  is  far 
superior  to  metal  pans  in  every  way. 

Chafing  Dish  Cooking  is  treated  in  Chapter  XIV  of 
the  Century  Cook  Book,  and  there  are  several  smaller 
volumes  specially  devoted  to  this  interesting  branch 
of  the  art — dining-room  cooking  it  might  be  called — 
one  by  Alice  L.  James. 

Who  has  not  enjoyed  a  welsh  rarebit  made  in  a 
chafing  dish — or  terrapin,  or  lobster  a  la  Newburg,  or 
chicken  livers,  or  crab  toast,  smelts,  venison,  etc.*? 

For  housekeepers  of  moderate  means  who  want  to 


SAVORY    COOKING  151 

know  what  wonders  of  palatable  cooking  can  be 
achieved  with  scraps  and  left-overs,  among  other  things, 
no  guide  is  better  than  The  Helping  Hand  Cook  Book 
by  Marion  Harland  and  Christine  Terhune  Herrick. 
It  contains  menus  for  every  breakfast,  lunch  and  dinner 
from  the  first  of  January  to  the  last  of  December. 

While  purchasers  of  fireless  cookers  are  always  pro- 
vided with  brief  printed  instructions,  I  would  advise 
every  owner  of  such  a  box  to  get  a  copy  of  Margaret 
J.  Mitchell's  Fireless  Cook  Book,  which  contains  full 
directions,  with  recipes  and  menus.  The  question  of 
seasoning  is  discussed;  there  are  chapters  on  meats, 
vegetables,  desserts,  etc.;  hints  as  to  how  to  tell  good 
material  from  bad;  directions  to  prevent  over  or  under 
cooking,  etc. 


A  NOBLE  ART 


O  one  who  has  read  the  last  chapter, 
and  Chapter  II  can  fail  to  be  con- 
vinced that  cooking  is  not  only  a 
science,  but  the  most  important  of  all 
sciences — the  science  on  which  our 
health  depends  more  than  on  any 
other;  a  science  concerning  which  Sir 
Henry  Thompson  has  truly  said 
that  an  adequate  recognition  of  its  value  in  prolonging 
healthy  life  and  in  promoting  cheerful  temper,  preva- 
lent good  nature,  and  improved  moral  tone,  "would 
achieve  almost  a  revolution  in  the  habits  of  a  large 
part  of  the  community." 

Nor  is  cookery  merely  a  science,  it  is  also  an  art. 
It  can  and  will  be  classed  in  the  future  as  one  of  the 
fine  arts. 

A  famous  French  lawyer  once  declared  that  he 
would  not  believe  in  the  advent  of  real  civilization 

152 


A    NOBLE    ART  153 

until  a  chef  had  been  elected  a  member  of  the  Institute 
of  Arts  and  Sciences. 

The  details  given  in  the  preceding  chapter  show 
how  a  good  cook  can  vary  the  Flavors  of  food  as  a 
composer  varies  his  orchestral  colors;  and  if  she  does 
her  work  with  intelligence  and  con  amore  she  can  get 
genuine  artistic  delight  therefrom.  At  the  same  time 
she  will  have  the  moral  satisfaction  of  knowing  that 
she  is  giving  gastronomic  pleasure  to  those  who  benefit 
by  her  art. 

A  cook  can  be  genuinely  creative,  inventing  new 
sauces,  new  flavors,  new  combinations,  new  dishes,  with 
appropriate  names  for  them,  thus  acquiring  universal 
fame,  as  did  Careme  and  many  others,  among  them 
Bechamel,  whose  name  has  become  a  household  word 
the  world  over,  not  because  he  was  a  marquis  but  be- 
cause he  invented  a  new  sauce. 

From  a  moral  point  of  view,  cooking  is  one  of  the 
noblest  of  the  arts.  The  old  adage  that  the  way  to  a 
man's  heart  is  through  his  stomach  is  often  sneered  at 
as  being  materialistic  if  not  coarse.  It  is  no  such 
thing;  it  simply  hints  at  the  truth  that  it  is  extremely 
difficult  for  a  man  to  be  amiable  and  loving  when  he 
suffers  the  pangs  of  dyspepsia.  On  this  subject  one  of 
the  30,000  persons  who  wrote  to  the  London  "Tele- 
graph" in  answer  to  the  question,  "Is  Marriage  A  Fail- 
ure?" made  some  remarks  which  every  young  woman 
who  is,  or  expects  to  be,  a  wife  should  ponder  deeply: 


154  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

Where  the  husband  is  an  Intellectual  man,  and  engaged  in 
intellectual  pursuits,  good  cookery  assumes  a  tenfold  importance, 
as  the  want  of  physical  exercise  entailed  by  most  intellectual 
occupations  renders  it  imperative  that  all  food  eaten  shall  be  of 
first-class  quality  and  cooked  to  perfection.  The  most  intellect- 
ual man  in  existence  ceases  to  be  intellectual  while  he  has  a 
couple  of  pounds  or  so  of  bad  food  slowly  decaying  in  his  stom- 
ach instead  of  digesting.  Is  "A  Young  Girl's"  ideal  of  married 
life  to  have  the  man  she  loves  always  bright  and  cheerful,  al- 
ways intellectual,  and  generally  at  his  best,  and  to  have  as 
strong  and  healthy,  and  even  brighter  and  better  company,  at 
sixty  and  seventy  than  at  twenty-four?  I  am  sure  it  is.  Then 
let  her  give  him  a  chance  of  realizing  that  ideal  by  giving  the 
utmost  attention  to  his  dinners,  so  that  the  food  he  eats  is  on 
his  stomach  and  brain  like  feathers,  and  not  like  lead.  If  she 
wishes  him  to  degenerate  into  an  ill-tempered,  exacting  grumbler 
before  forty,  or  to  prefer  dining  an5rv\'here  rather  than  at  home, 
then  let  her  devote  herself  wholly  to  the  drawing-room  depart- 
ment of  the  house,  and  leave  the  kitchen  and  the  dining-room 
to  hired  servants.  Good  cooks  quickly  become  bad  ones  where 
the  mistress  neglects  personal  superintendence,  and  just  so  long 
as  ladies  have  a  soul  above  cookery  will  ill-temper  and  dyspep- 
sia, with  all  their  consequent  train  of  ills  and  discomforts,  be 
the  rule,  and  not  the  exception,  in  middle-class  English  homes. 

THE    SOCIAL    CASTE    OF    COOKS. 

One  of  the  most  amazing  phenomena  in  the  United 
States  is  the  great  number  of  girls  of  all  classes  who 
consider  kitchen  work  beneath  them  and  not  worthy 
of  serious  attention. 

Girls  of  the  working  classes  are  not  in  the  least 
ashamed  to  confess  their  absolute  ignorance  of  the  art 
of  cooking,  though  they  know  that  after  marriage  they 


ANOBLEART  155 

must  cook  for  their  families.  Then  they  bewail  their 
fate  if  their  husbands,  tormented  by  dyspepsia,  seek 
relief  in  strong  drink.  France,  it  has  often  been  said, 
is  on  the  whole  a  sober  nation  because  it  is  a  nation 
of  good  cooks. 

American  girls  should  remember  that,  as  a  Chicago 
expert  has  testified,  "few  men  abandon  or  get  a  divorce 
from  a  woman  who  is  a  good  cook." 

The  most  amazing  of  our  young  women  are  the  fac- 
tory workers  and  shop-girls  who  imagine  they  are  of  a 
higher  social  caste  than  cooks,  and  look  down  on  them. 

What  makes  this  attitude  the  more  ridiculous  is  that 
the  mothers  of  all  these  girls  were  cooks  (mostly  very 
bad  ones!)  and  that  all  of  these  girls  themselves,  when 
they  marry,  must  spend  much  of  their  time  in  the 
kitchen. 

To  be  sure,  they  are  not  paid  for  this  work,  as  pro- 
fessional cooks  are. 

Some  of  the  social  "reformers"  are  now  demanding 
that  husbands  pay  their  wives  for  domestic  work.  If 
that  point  should  be  carried,  what  would  be  the  social 
status  of  the  wives — nine  out  of  every  ten  in  the  coun- 
try— who  cook  for  their  families'? 

In  future,  if  there  is  any  looking  down,  it  will  be 
done  by  the  cooks,  whose  work  is  infinitely  more  ele- 
vating, refined,  scientific  and  artistic  than  that  of  fac- 
tory and  shop  girls,  who,  instead  of  enjoying  the  cooks' 
splendid  opportunities  for  exercising  their  brains,  their 


156  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

taste,  and  their  inventive  powers,  are  reduced  to  the 
level  of  mere  machines  by  the  deadly  monotony  of 
having  to  make  so  and  so  many  dozen  shirt-waists  or 
paper  boxes,  or  ruining  their  health  by  standing  be- 
hind a  counter,  serving  the  same  things,  day  after  day 
and  year  after  year,  to  customers  most  of  whom  look 
down  on  them  as  being  of  a  lower  social  status. 

That  settles  the  foolish  notion  that  American  girls 
refuse  to  become  cooks  because  they  do  not  wish  to 
lose  social  caste.  Society  women  are  no  more  addicted 
to  inviting  the  girls  who  wait  on  them  in  stores  to 
their  banquets  or  teas  than  they  are  the  girls  who  wait 
on  them  at  home  or  preside  over  their  kitchens. 

Moreover,  no  mistress  would  dare  to  treat  her  cook 
so  contemptuously,  so  insultingly,  as  shop  girls  and 
factory  girls  are  often  treated,  or  as  chorus  girls  are 
treated  habitually  on  the  stage. 

French  supremacy  is  demonstrated  in  many  ways, 
not  the  least  of  which  is  the  recognition,  generations 
ago,  of  the  noble  status  of  the  cook,  domestic  or  pro- 
fessional. 

It  may  not  be  literally  true  that  French  girls  read 
cookery-books  with  the  avidity  with  which  ours  read 
novels,  but  certainly  they  are  proud  of  their  ability 
to  cook  savory  dishes. 

An  article  in  the  New  York  "Times"  (February  1 1, 
1912)  on  the  most  exclusive  clubs  in  Paris,  where  the 
chefs  receive  the  salaries  of  ambassadors,  states  that 


A    NOBLE    ART  157 

members  "have  obtained  permission  for  their  daugh- 
ters— young  women,  belonging  to  well-known  French 
families — to  be  present  in  the  kitchen  while  the  head 
cook  is  preparing  dinner  every  afternoon.  While  the 
chef  officiates  in  front  of  the  huge  furnace  which  stands 
in  the  center  of  the  kitchen  he  is  surrounded  by  a  group 
of  fashionably  dressed  young  women,  who  follow  all 
his  movements  with  the  greatest  interest  and  listen 
eagerly  to  his  explanations  as  he  initiates  them  into  the 
mysteries  of  his  art." 

The  French  cuisine  is  preeminent  to-day  because  a 
century  ago  the  daughters  of  the  best  French  houses 
were  taught  to  cook.  And,  as  Anatole  France  has  re- 
marked, these  girls  knew  that  "there  is  no  humiliation 
in  washing  dishes." 

To  be  sure,  dish  washing,  as  done  at  present,  is 
monotonous  and  hardly  entertaining.  But  if  we  tried 
to  avoid  all  things  in  this  world  that  are  monotonous 
and  not  entertaining,  what  would  happen  *? 

My  own  work  includes  some  hours  of  daily  drudgery. 
What  busy  man's  or  woman's  does  n't'?  Why  discrim- 
inate against  the  kitchen?  Read  Marion  Harland's 
delightful  little  book  on  Household  Manage?nent 
(New  York:  Home  Topics  Publishing  Co.,  23  Duane 
St.)  ;  you  can  do  it  in  an  hour  and  you  will  benefit  par- 
ticularly by  the  chapter  on  "Fine  Art  in  'Drudgery,'  " 
in  which,  writes  the  distinguished  author,  "I  give  a 
recipe  for  dish-washing  as  carefully  and  with  as  much 


158  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

pleasure  as  I  would  write  out  directions  for  making  an 
especially  delicious  entree  or  dessert." 

Women  and  men  who  prepare  for  the  stage,  dramatic 
or  musical,  have  to  undergo  an  enormous  amount  of 
drudgery  and  keep  it  up  all  their  lives.  In  the  summer 
of  1912  I  heard  the  greatest  of  all  pianists,  Paderewski, 
daily  practising  elementary  "five-finger"  exercises,  and 
he  admitted  that  it  took  great  strength  of  will  to  keep 
it  up ;  but  he  knows  the  truth  of  the  remark  once  made 
by  Hans  von  Biilow  that  if  he  neglected  his  practicing 
one  day  he  knew  it;  if  two  days,  his  friends  knew  it; 
if  three  days,  the  public  knew  it. 

That  is  a  kind  of  drudgery  compared  with  which 
dishwashing  is  a  picnic.  Most  dishwashers,  moreover, 
dawdle  dreadfully.  They  could  do  their  work  in  one 
half  if  not  one  quarter  the  time  it  takes  them.  See 
the  remarks  of  the  astonished  Isabella  Bird  Bishop  in 
her  book  on  the  Rocky  Mountains  on  the  way  she  saw 
two  young  bachelors  disposing  of  their  kitchen  work  in 
the  twinkle  of  an  eye. 

ROYALTY  IN  THE  KITCHEN. 

England  is  in  a  state  of  transition.  As  the  London 
"Times"  (October  29,  1910)  remarked,  there  are  in 
that  country  many  women  who  would  be  proud,  and 
even  consider  it  rather  smart,  to  cook  a  dish  of  savory 
eggs  in  a  chafing-dish  on  a  silver-strewn  sideboard,  but 
who  would  nevertheless  be  ashamed  to  say  that  they 


A    NOBLE    ART  159 

could  knead  and  bake  a  loaf  of  bread  which  could 
rival  that  made  by  their  cooks. 

A  change  is,  however,  impending,  and  the  good  ex- 
ample comes  from  those  socially  highest  up.  Queen 
Victoria's  daughters  had  to  spend  many  hours  in  the 
kitchen,  and  the  present  Queen  also  is,  as  the  "Times" 
informs  us,  an  expert  cook,  and  altogether  "a  pattern 
mother  and  a  skilled  housekeeper,  who  would  put  many 
middle-class  mistresses  to  shame  by  her  accurate  and 
up-to-date  knowledge  of  details." 

Queen  Alexandra  was  the  chief  patroness  of  the  Uni- 
versal Cookery  and  Food  Association,  founded  in  1885. 

Noblesse  oblige.  The  English  royal  family  feels  that 
it  is  its  duty  to  set  a  good  example  to  the  women  of  the 
whole  country  in  this  matter,  and  the  example  is  being 
followed  widely.  There  is,  indeed,  a  nation-wide 
awakening  in  the  United  Kingdom  regarding  the  im- 
portance of  the  culinary  art,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  mo- 
ment, in  considering  the  subject  of  cooking  in  schools. 

Sarah  baked  and  cooked  for  Abraham,  though  she 
could  command  as  many  servants  as  a  queen. 

It  would  be  easy  to  give  a  long  list  of  queens  and 
other  women  of  the  highest  nobility  who  recognized  the 
nobility  of  the  art  of  cooking  by  their  interest  and  par- 
ticipation in  it. 

Kings,  too,  have  not  held  it  beneath  their  dignity  to 
prepare  savory  dishes  with  their  own  hands.  Louis 
XVIII  invented  the  truffes  a  la  puree  d' ortolans^  and 


i6o  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

always  prepared  the  dish  himself,  assisted  by  the  Due 
d'Escars. 

Frederick  the  Great  was  too  busy  with  his  political 
work  and  his  flute  to  spend  his  time  in  the  kitchen, 
but  he  wrote  a  poem  in  praise  of  his  cook. 

In  Germany,  as  in  England,  it  is  obligatory  on  the 
princesses  of  the  Empire  to  learn  how  to  cook  a  good 
meal ;  and  the  daughters  of  the  aristocracy  of  all  grades 
follow  their  example. 

Louis  XIII  prepared  his  own  game,  and  prided  him- 
self on  his  preserves,  while  Louis  XV  also  was  an  ama- 
teur cook.  He  was  particularly  fond  of  making  rich 
sauces. 

Under  Louis  XIV  Conde  won  international  fame  as 
inventor  of  an  improved  bean  soup.  A  Papal  Cook 
Book  was  printed  in  Venice  in  1570  by  order  of  Pope 
Pius  V.  Richelieu  and  Mazarin  invented  dishes  still 
named  after  them.  The  philosopher  Montaigne  wrote 
a  book  on  the  science  of  eating  {Science  de  la  gueule). 
Sauce  Colbert  is  named  after  the  statesman  who  origi- 
nated it.  Bechamel  was  immortalized  by  a  new  sauce 
of  his  concoction.  When  Careme  went  with  Lord 
Stuart,  the  English  Ambassador  to  Vienna,  he  was 
treated  as  a  personal  friend.  Louis  XVIII,  George  IV 
and  other  crowned  heads  vied  for  his  allegiance  but  he 
preferred  to  bestow  the  benefit  of  his  supreme  art  on 
Rothschild  in  Paris  to  whom  he  had  been  presented  by 
Prince  Louis  Rohan. 


A   NOBLE   ART  161 

Volumes  might  be  written  regarding  the  personal  in- 
terest in  culinary  art  taken  by  rulers  of  all  kinds.  The 
highest  form  of  royalty  is  genius. 

In  France,  particularly,  the  rulers  in  the  world  of 
science,  art,  and  literature  have  been  as  devoted  gastro- 
nomes as  the  political  rulers ;  and  with  astonishing  fre- 
quency these  great  men  have  taken  not  merely  an  epi- 
curean interest  in  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  but  have 
endeavored  to  multiply  them. 

Striking  confirmation  of  this  statement  may  be  found 
in  "L'Art  du  Bien  Manger,"  by  Gustave  Geffroy  and 
Edmond  Richardin,  375  pages  of  which  are  devoted, 
under  the  heading  "Ecrivains  Cuisiniers,"  to  the  recipes 
of  dishes  originated  and  promulgated  by  well-known 
men  of  letters,  among  them  such  eminent  writers  as 
Alexandre  Dumas,  father  and  son,  Andre  Theuriet, 
Jules  Claretie,  Edmond  Rostand,  etc. 

Lord  Bacon  thought  it  no  shame,  as  Frederick  W. 
Hackwood  recalls,  "to  bend  his  mighty  intellect  to  the 
problems  of  the  kitchen." 

David  Hume,  on  retiring  from  public  life,  declared 
that  he  would  devote  the  remaining  years  of  his  life 
to  the  science  of  cooking. 

Henry  VIII  made  a  gift  of  a  manor  to  his  cook  for 
originating  a  good  pudding,  and  royal  honors  have  been 
paid  to  many  culinary  inventors.  By  the  ancient  Ro- 
mans Apicius  was  "almost  deified  for  discovering  how 
to  maintain  oysters  fresh  and  alive  during  long  jour- 


^*<;ir'. 


A  fifteenth  century  kitchen  in  France 


A    NOBLE    ART  163 

neys."  In  Athens  Dionysos  was  highly  esteemed  as 
the  inventor  of  bread;  in  his  honor  there  were  street 
processions  of  men  carrying  loaves. 

ROSSINI,   CAR^ME  AND   PADEREWSKI. 

Just  as  Caruso  is  prouder  of  the  caricatures  he  draws 
than  of  his  achievements  as  the  leading  tenor  of  his 
time,  so  Rossini  prided  himself  more  on  his  skill  in 
dressing  a  salad  than  on  his  having  written  successful 
operas.  He  frequently  delighted  his  guests  with  dishes 
prepared  by  himself,  and  used  to  declare,  half  seriously, 
that  he  had  missed  his  vocation. 

One  day,  when  a  friend,  taking  him  at  his  word, 
asked  him  why  he  had  not  become  a  cook,  he  replied 
that  he  would  have  done  so  had  not  his  early  education 
been  too  much  neglected. 

A  famous  French  chef,  proud  of  his  profession,  de- 
clared that  while  there  have  been  musicians  and  other 
artists  who  were  already  famous  at  the  age  of  twenty, 
preeminence  in  cooking  has  never  occurred  under  the 
more  mature  age  of  thirty. 

Careme,  at  an  early  age,  had  the  ambition,  as  he 
relates  in  his  memoirs,  of  elevating  his  profession  to 
an  art.  For  ten  years  he  studied  with  the  most  eminent 
chefs,  besides  reading  books  and  taking  notes  like  a 
scholar. 

Like  all  genuine  artists,  he  was  grateful  for  true  ap- 
preciation of  his  art.     Of  Talleyrand  he  wrote:  "He 


i64  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

understands  the  genius  of  a  cook,  he  respects  it,  he  is 
the  most  competent  judge  of  delicate  progress,  and  his 
expenditures  are  wise  and  great  at  the  same  time." 

Why  do  not  great  culinary  artists  abound  in 
America? 

Because  there  is  too  little  appreciation  of  their 
art. 

Paderewski,  in  his  chateau  on  the  shores  of  Lake 
Geneva,  where  he  lives  like  a  king  of  epicures,  thanks 
to  the  intelligent  and  artistic  housekeeping  of  his 
devoted  wife  (the  Baroness  of  Rosen),  told  me  an 
anecdote  which  illustrates  this  point. 

During  one  of  his  first  tours  in  the  United  States  he 
enjoyed  a  dinner  which  was  equal  to  anything  he  could 
have  expected  in  one  of  the  best  Parisian  restaurants. 
He  was  so  surprised  and  pleased  that  he  sent  his  thanks 
and  compliments  to  the  chef. 

A  few  years  later,  happening  to  be  in  the  same  city, 
he  again  went  to  that  restaurant.  The  meal  he  got 
was  still  far  above  the  average,  but  was  not  as  good  as 
before.  However,  on  the  occasion  of  a  third  visit,  he 
again  tried  the  same  place.  The  food  was  uninterest- 
ing from  the  beginning  of  the  meal  to  the  end. 

He  asked  the  head  waiter  whether  the  former  chef 
had  left.  He  had  not  left,  the  waiter  informed  him; 
and,  on  being  pressed  for  an  explanation  of  the  change 
in  the  quality  of  the  meals,  he  said : 

"If  you  had  to  play,  night  after  night,  before  an 


A    NOBLE    ART  165 

audience  of  barbarians  who  did  not  appreciate  the  best 
things  in  your  performances,  would  you  continue,  year 
after  year,  to  play  as  well  as  you  do  now^" 

Paderewski  had  to  confess  to  him  that,  in  all  proba- 
bility, he  would  not. 

LOOKING  DOWN   ON  OTHERS. 

In  my  career  as  a  musical  critic  I  have  found  that  I 
could  do  much  more  toward  improving  the  artistic  do- 
ings of  singers  and  players  by  praising  their  best  things 
than  by  finding  fault  with  their  poorest. 

In  the  culinary  art,  likewise,  the  reader  will  find  that 
far  better  results  are  reached  by  praising  the  cook  for 
her  successes  than  by  never  speaking  to  her  except  to 
find  fault.  It  makes  her  try  to  earn  more  praise^  not 
only  in  the  making  of  that  particular  dish  but  in  the 
making  of  others. 

Above  all  things,  a  mistress  who  expects  artistic 
dishes  from  a  superior  cook  should  never  appear  to  be 
looking  down  on  her. 

This  looking  down  business,  perhaps  more  than  any- 
thing else,  stands  in  the  way  of  our  getting  good  cooks. 

At  the  same  time,  perhaps  more  than  anything  else, 
it  shows  what  fools  these  mortals  be. 

All  over  the  country,  but  particularly  in  the  West,  I 
have  found  that  most  families  look  down  on  other  fam- 
ilies. It  is  chiefly  a  question  of  money.  Those  who 
have  an  income  of  $3,000  look  down  on  those  who  have 


i66  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

only  $1,000  or  $1,500,  while  those  who  have  $10,000 
do  all  they  can  to  show  their  superiority  to  three- 
thousanders,  only  to  be,  in  turn,  snubbed  by  those  whose 
income  is  $20,000;  and  so  on. 

One  day  in  a  California  village  where  I  was  spend- 
ing the  winter,  I  was  surprised  at  the  rudeness  of  a 
storekeeper  with  whom  I  had  had  some  pleasant  chats. 
He  hardly  answered  my  questions ;  in  fact,  he  snubbed 
me.  I  found  out  next  day  that  he  had  just  inherited 
a  large  fortune,  a  piece  of  luck  which  he  celebrated  by 
promptly  looking  down  on  everybody  he  knew. 

As  a  rule,  however,  I  regret  to  say,  the  women  are 
more  addicted  than  the  men  to  this  preposterously 
silly  habit  of  looking  down  on  others.  Not  to  speak  of 
its  being  extremely  ill-mannered  it  is  the  most  deadly 
obstacle  to  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  domestic  help. 

We  shall  never  have  a  sufficient  supply  of  good  help- 
ers until  mistresses  recognize  the  fact  that  cooking  is  a 
fine  art,  and  that  those  who  practise  it  should  be  treated, 
not  as  servants,  but  as  practitioners  of  the  most  im- 
portant profession  in  the  world — a  profession  which 
stands  to  the  medical  in  the  relation  of  prevention  to 
cure;  and  that  prevention  is  better  than  cure  we  all 
know.     It 's  cheaper,  too. 

An  old  English  writer  has  justly  remarked  that  "the 
kitchen  is  the  best  pharmacopoeia." 

F.  W.  Hackwood  calls  attention  to  the  suggestive 
fact  that  all  the  best  old  cookery  books  in  the  English 


ANOBLEART  167 

language  were  written  by  medical  men.     Sir  Kenelm   1 
Digby  and  Dr.  Mayerne  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
Dr.  Mill  and  Dr.  Hunter  in  the  eighteenth,  and  Dr. 
Kitchiner  in  the  nineteenth  gave  to  the  world  "the  best 
English  cookery  books  of  their  respective  eras." 

Queen  Anne's  physician,  Dr.  Lister,  declared  that 
"no  man  can  be  a  good  physician  who  has  not  a  compe- 
tent knowledge  of  cookery." 

That  is  the  opinion  prevalent  among  the  best  medical 
men  of  to-day,  who  hold  correct  advice  in  regard  to 
diet  and  the  proper  cooking  of  the  food  recommended 
to  be  usually  of  more  importance  than  drugs. 

Many  thousands  of  invalids  have  been  killed  by  im- 
proper or  badly  cooked  food. 

The  foolish  factory  and  shop  girls  who  look  down  on 
kitchen  work  should  be  reminded  of  the  fact  that  none 
of  the  contributors  to  the  pages  of  the  various  women's 
journals  are  more  honored  than  those  who  are  famed 
for  their  skill  in  cooking  and  giving  others  the  benefit 
of  their  experience.  Some  of  these  women,  like  Mrs. 
Rorer,  Marion  Harland,  Mrs.  Lincoln,  Christine 
Terhune  Herrick,  Janet  MacKenzie  Hill,  Mary 
Ronald,  and  Helen  S.  Wright,  have  won  international 
repute. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  whereas  in  Europe  most  of 
the  cook  books  have  been  written  by  men,  in  America 
the  authors  of  such  books  are  mostly  women.  From 
American  women,  with  their  keen  intelligence  and  good 


i68  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

taste,  great  things  may  be  expected  in  the  way  of  gas- 
tronomic progress. 

After  the  appearance  in  the  "Century  Magazine"  of 
my  brief  remarks  on  the  nobility  of  the  art  of  cookery  I 
heard  of  a  wealthy  young  lady  (I  hope  and  believe 
there  were  many  others)  who  was  impelled,  after  read- 
ing them,  to  take  up  cooking  and  found  it  so  fascinating 
that  she  neglected  all  her  other  pet  diversions.  I  know 
educated  young  ladies  who  would  rather  cook  than  do 
anything  else  except,  perhaps,  go  to  the  theater;  they 
find  it  "so  entertaining  and  engrossing." 

Many  anecdotes  might  be  related  of  women  known 
to  fame  who  love  kitchen  work.  To  take  only  one 
case :  Mrs.  Champ  Clark,  who  came  so  near  being  first 
lady  of  the  land,  is  a  noted  cook  and  domestic  science 
expert.  One  who  knows  her  writes  that  "she  does 
much  of  her  own  cooking,  especially  when  intimate 
friends  dine  with  her  and  they  rave  over  her  dishes.  It 
has  the  good  old  Southern  taste,  and  is  minus  the  fingle- 
f angle  garnishments  often  employed  to  cover  up  in- 
feriority. Mrs.  Clark's  bread  is  a  delight,  and  when 
she  has  the  opportunity  she  always  bakes  it  herself. 
She  took  first  prize  in  a  bread-baking  contest  once. 
She  holds  that  such  labor  is  not  undignified  for  any  of 
the  first  ladies  of  the  land.  The  word  'servant'  has 
been  much  abused,  its  early  meaning  'to  serve'  being 
beautiful,  and  certainly  there  is  nothing  better  than  to 
do  something  for  somebody." 


ANOBLEART  169 

There  are  signs  that  the  ladies  of  our  time  will  take 
up  the  culinary  art  as  a  fashionable  cult,  as  did  the 
ladies  of  the  French  aristocracy  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. 

Many  American  society  women  are  expert  cooks  and 
delight  in  inventing  and  concocting  diverse  dishes. 
One  of  the  wealthiest  women  in  the  world  is  Mrs. 
George  J.  Gould.  In  summer,  in  her  Adirondack 
camp,  she  spends  much  time  in  the  kitchen  helping  to 
cook  and  to  make  preserves  and  jams.  She  has,  it  is 
said,  "a  perfect  genius  for  combining  things  and  crea- 
ting new  sensations  of  taste."  Her  children,  boys  as 
well  as  girls,  understand  cooking  in  all  its  branches. 
Grace  Aspinwall,  in  the  "National  Food  Magazine" 
(May,  1910)  gives  details  regarding  the  culinary  do- 
ings of  other  society  women — Mrs.  Philip  Lydig,  Mrs. 
Joseph  Widener,  Mrs.  Norman  de  R.  Whitehouse, 
Mrs.  Oliver  Harriman  and  Mrs.  W.  K.  Vanderbilt,  Jr. 

Mrs.  Woodrow  Wilson  is  also  fond  of  cooking,  and 
after  her  husband  was  elected  President  of  the  United 
States  the  newspapers  printed  pictures  of  her  at  work 
in  the  kitchen. 

DOES    COOKING    PAY? 

The  profitableness  of  the  art  also  is  a  point  not  to  be 
overlooked  at  a  time  when  all  professions,  except  cook- 
ing^ are  so  overcrowded. 

Had  Rossini  become  a  chef,   he  would  not  have 


lyo  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

earned  nearly  as  much  money  as  he  did  with  his  operas. 
But  he  was  exceptionally  successful.  The  vast  ma- 
jority of  musicians,  and  other  artists  of  all  kinds  and 
grades,  have  not  only  much  more  drudgery  to  undergo 
than  cooks,  but  they  also  have  much  less  chance  to  boast 
of  a  fat  bank  account.  The  best  chefs  command 
$5,000  to  $10,000  a  year  with  free  board  and  lodging. 
Not  to  speak  of  other  advantages,  what  a  splendid 
chance  this  gives  them  to  "look  down  on"  people  who 
earn  less! 

The  average  income  of  physicians,  clergymen,  and 
teachers  in  the  United  States  is  about  $600  a  year,  and 
it  is  not  rising  steadily  like  that  of  cooks.  The  better 
class  of  "plain  cooks"  now  get,  in  New  York,  $25  to 
$30  a  month  with  room  and  board.  Such  a  cook  can 
easily  put  into  the  savings  bank  $200  to  $300  a  year,  or 
half  as  much  as  is  earned  by  the  physicians,  clergymen, 
and  teachers,  who  have  to  pay  for  their  board  and  lodg- 
ing.    Does  cooking  pay? 


VI 

THE  FUTURE  OF  COOKING 


SCHOOL  GIRLS  LIKE  IT. 

ESPECT  for  the  noble  art  of  cooking 
is  being  greatly  enhanced  by  its  in- 
troduction into  our  public  and  pri- 
vate schools  as  an  important  branch  of 
education. 

When  this  innovation  was  first  sug- 
gested, the  funny  men  of  the  news- 
papers seized  on  it  as  a  welcome  new  subject  for  their 
jokes  and  cartoons,  and  even  now  not  a  few  persons 
who  have  given  the  question  insufficient  thought 
speak  of  cookery  as  one  of  the  fads  and  frills 
of  our  schools.  But  at  a  budget  hearing  in  October, 
1910,  Dr.  W.  H.  Maxwell,  Superintendent  of  the  New 
York  City  Public  Schools,  made  the  memorable  state- 
ment that  he  considered  the  retention  of  cooking-lessons 
more  important  than  the  study  of  languages. 

He  might  have  gone  further ;  he  might  have  said  that 

171 


172  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

because  health  is  more  important  than  learning,  there- 
fore cookery  is  more  important  than  anything  else  now 
taught  in  our  schools. 

It  is  useless  to  say  that  cooking  should  be  taught  at 
home.  Most  mothers,  especially  among  the  working 
classes,  have  neither  the  time  nor  the  knowledge  to 
teach  their  daughters  how  to  prepare  food  rationally. 

Recognizing  this  fact,  the  Young  Women's  Christian 
Association  also  began  some  years  ago  to  provide  cul- 
inary lessons. 

One  of  the  reasons  for  this  action  may  be  found  in  a 
statement  made  in  the  Twenty-seventh  Report  of  the 
New  York  Cooking  School,  that  ''good  coffee  and  a 
palatable  meal  often  remove  the  need  of  strong  drink, 
and  many  a  working-woman  has  had  her  cares  light- 
ened by  the  child  who  has  learned  to  cook." 

An  English  girl,  who  had  thus  been  taught,  said: 
"Mother  tells  me  she  'd  make  a  drop  of  nice  broth  for 
the  children  out  of  an  old  bone  as  she  'd  have  thrown 
away." 

A  glimpse  of  future  possibilities  is  given  by  an  ex- 
periment made  in  six  Chicago  schools,  with  i,200 
pupils.  The  boys  in  the  manual-training  classes 
made  fireless  cookers,  and  the  girls  did  the  rest.  One 
result  was  a  rich,  palatable  soup  costing  one  cent  a  bowl. 

The  most  encouraging  aspect  of  the  situation  is  that 
both  in  England  and  in  America  the  experience  has  been 
that  the  children  like  the  cooking  best  of  all  their  lessons 


FUTURE    OF   COOKING         173 

and  are  glad  to  practise  them  at  home.  As  one  princi- 
pal wrote,  "The  cooking  has  been  enthusiastically  re- 
ceived by  the  pupils,  and  the  parents  are  heartily  in 
favor  of  itr 

BOYS    AND    SOLDIERS    AS    COOKS. 

Schoolboys  also  should,  and  will,  be  taught.  They 
can  help  their  mothers  at  home — why  not^ — especially 
in  daughterless  families;  and  there  are  many  occasions 
in  life — when  the  wife  is  ill,  or  when  men  are  serving 
in  the  army  or  camping — when  such  knowledge  will 
prove  useful. 

Apart  from  practical  considerations,  it  has  an  educa- 
tional value,  too,  training,  as  it  does,  the  memory,  the 
power  of  observation,  the  senses  of  taste  and  smell,  and 
the  inventive  faculty,  besides  inculcating  neatness  and 
cleanliness. 

There  are  times  when  men  who  can  cook  receive  bet- 
ter pay  than  most  others,  though  their  work  be  both 
easier  and  pleasanter.  For  instance,  in  an  article  en- 
titled "In  Canada's  Wilderness,"  which  appeared  in  the 
New  York  "Evening  Post"  of  September  1,  1910,  the 
writer  described  the  trip  of  a  prospecting  party  through 
a  section  of  the  Northwest  which  was  tapped  by  the 
Grand  Trunk  Pacific  Railroad.  Speaking  of  the  cooks, 
he  said  that  they  were  "good  cooks,  and  a  good  cook  in 
that  country  is  almost  worth  his  weight  in  fine  rubies. 
They  are  paid  from  $75  to  $80  a  month,  and  receive 


174  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

housing  and  bedding.  This  is  more  money  than  any 
of  the  other  men  about  an  engineering  camp  receive, 
except  the  engineer  himself." 

One  of  these  cooks  had  been  manager  and  part  owner 
of  a  great  tea  plantation  in  Ceylon;  another  had  been 
an  officer  in  a  British  regiment  and  had  served  in  the 
South  African  War.  He  had  just  sold  $12,000  worth 
of  property  in  Edmonton. 

The  London  "Daily  Mail"  of  June  20,  1912,  gives 
an  account  of  an  Oxford  cooking  school  which  has  a 
special  class  for  men  who  wish  to  learn  to  cook.  It  is 
well  attended  and  the  men,  so  the  teacher  says,  "are 
very  keen  about  the  work,  and  much  keener  than  the 
women  would  be  as  to  details.  Nothing  escapes  their 
attention." 

The  men  work  in  pairs  with  the  simplest  of  utensils, 
and  each  lesson  extends  over  an  hour.  Special  stress  is 
laid  upon  frying  and  stewing,  and  upon  the  different 
meals  that  can  be  prepared  in  a  pot  or  pan  over  a  camp 
fire.  They  are  taught  the  various  ways  of  cooking  veg- 
etables, of  making  meat  pies,  and  how  to  produce  such 
delicacies  as  pancakes  and  scrambled  or  poached  eggs. 
Each  lesson  affords  time  for  cooking  three  dishes,  and 
at  the  conclusion  a  number  of  recipes  are  given,  and 
these  are  duly  recorded  for  future  reference. 

The  London  County  Council  began  to  encourage 
boys  in  the  autumn  of  1910  when  a  school  for  teaching 
them  how  to  cook  was  started.     There  were  fifteen 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         175 

pupils.  Two  years  later  there  were  forty.  It  is  only 
a  small  beginning,  but  from  such  an  avalanche  may 
grow.  The  aim  of  the  school  was  stated  to  be  to  equip 
boys  between  fourteen  and  sixteen  with  a  knowledge 
of  practical  cookery  to  enable  them  to  fill  positions  as 
cooks  in  first-class  hotels,  clubs,  and  restaurants.  The 
course  lasts  three  years  and  positions  are  guaranteed  at 
the  end. 

According  to  official  statistics,  106  boys  in  England 
attended  cookery  classes  during  1910-11. 

Soldiers  in  all  countries  have  to  do  a  good  deal  of 
camp  cooking,  and  they  seem  to  enjoy  it.  Circular  1 1 
of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry  is  con- 
cerned with  army  cooking.  The  1912  report  of  Brig.- 
Gen.  Henry  G.  Shaw,  Commissary  General,  shows  that 
great  advantage  has  resulted  from  the  schools  for  bakers 
and  cooks  that  have  been  established  at  Fort  Riley, 
Kansas  City,  as  well  as  at  the  Barracks  in  Washington 
and  at  the  Presidio  in  San  Francisco.  During  the  year 
253  cooks,  131  bakers  and  52  mess  sergeants  have  been 
turned  out  by  the  schools  as  experts. 

An  English  translation  has  been  published  (London: 
Forster  Ground  Co.)  of  the  French  Manual  of  Field 
Cookery  entitled  Livre  de  Cuisine  Militaire  aux 
Manoeuvres  et  en  Campagne.  It  is  a  pamphlet  of  35 
pages,  including  specifications  and  pictures  of  necessary 
utensils,  with  simple  recipes,  and  a  preface  by  the 
French   War    Minister,    who   remarks,    among    other 


176  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

things,  that  it  is  no  longer  enough  to  appoint  certain 
men  to  the  duties  of  cooks,  but  it  is  "necessary  that 
every  man  .  .  .  should  be  able  to  prepare  his  own 
food  and  that  of  any  of  his  comrades,  who  may  not  be 
in  a  position  to  do  so,  by  means  of  the  simple  apparatus 
available." 

In  continental  countries  there  are  many  cooking 
schools  for  men.  In  Copenhagen,  for  instance,  as  we 
read  in  the  "Lancet,"  "there  is  an  old  frigate  moored  in 
a  canal  close  to  the  most  fashionable  center  of  the  town. 
Here  there  is  a  school  for  ship's  cooks.  On  board  a 
ship  with  the  limited  space  such  as  prevails  at  sea 
young  cooks  try  their  'prentice  hands  at  making  dishes 
such  as  are  served  to  passengers  on  sea  voyages.  There 
is  an  awning  on  the  deck,  tables  are  laid  out,  and  nu- 
merous inhabitants  of  Copenhagen  take  their  meals 
there,  for  they  are  both  varied  and  inexpensive.  Thus 
fully  qualified  cooks  are  being  prepared  for  the  sea,  and 
it  is  not  necessary  to  point  out  that,  whether  at  sea  or  on 
shore,  efficient  cooking  not  only  adds  to  the  joys  of  life 
but  is  a  very  necessary  aid  to  digestion." 

TRAVELING    COOKING    SCHOOLS. 

In  some  parts  of  Germany  traveling  cooking  schools 
have  been  organized  by  the  Government.  In  Prussia 
it  is  intended  to  provide  one  of  them  for  every  county. 
These  schools  move  from  place  to  place,  remaining  long 
enough  in  each  to  give  instruction  in  housekeeping  to 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         177 

the  daughters  of  laborers,  craftsmen,  and  farmers.  In 
the  case  of  the  farm  girls  the  instruction  includes  the 
caretaking  of  animals,  poultry  culture,  and  the  raising 
of  fruits  and  vegetables.  All  the  girls  are  taught  to 
cook,  to  sew,  to  repair  and  clean  clothing,  and  to  keep 
the  house  clean,  with  other  things  relating  to  health  and 
nutrition. 

One  of  the  principal  objects  of  these  itinerant  schools 
is  to  encourage  the  cultivation  of  a  greater  variety  of 
vegetables  in  the  home  gardens.  In  most  of  the 
Thuringian  villages,  for  instance,  it  is  said  that  the  only 
kind  of  vegetable  known  is  cabbage.  The  teachers 
have  had  considerable  difficulty  in  introducing  variety, 
for  the  German  peasant,  like  the  lower  classes  every- 
where, wants  to  eat  only  what  he  has  had  since  his 
childhood.  But  once  tasted  the  new  vegetables  are 
usually  welcomed  and  acclimated  in  the  villages  visited 
by  the  itinerant  culinary  missionaries. 

ENGLISH    SCHOOL    DINNERS. 

While  the  English  are  not  gastronomically  eminent 
among  the  nations  of  Europe,  they  are  attaching  more 
and  more  importance  to  kitchen  work,  especially  in 
schools,  in  which  lies  the  chief  hope  for  the  cooking  of 
the  future. 

This  growing  interest  was  illustrated  by  the  Confer- 
ence on  Diet  in  Public,  Secondary,  and  Private  Schools 
held  in  London  in  the  last  week  of  May,  1912.     Prom- 


178  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

inent  experts  made  addresses,  discussing  the  question 
of  school  diet  from  various  points  of  view.  The  "Daily 
Telegraph"  of  May  30,  in  concluding  its  account  of  the 
Conference,  made  some  remarks  which  are  quoted  here- 
with, as  they  give  a  vivid  glimpse  of  the  admirable 
culinary  work  that  is  evidently  being  now  done  in 
English  schools: 

"Of  recent  years  more  and  more  attention  has  been 
paid  to  the  dietary  in  schools,  and  the  general  teaching 
of  cookery  will  help  on  an  improvement  in  a  depart- 
ment of  social  life  in  which  we  are  behind  our  Conti- 
nental neighbors.  Happily,  there  are  a  considerable 
number  of  schools  in  which  the  menus  are  drawn  up  on 
well-ascertained  principles,  including  the  element  of 
variety.  Here  is  an  example  of  dinners  served  at  a 
large  school  at  8d.  each  to  over  100  children.  It  is 
chosen  from  those  used  from  May  13  to  May  17: 

Monday. 

Boiled  Beef  and  Carrots.     Roast  Mutton. 

Greens  and  Potatoes. 

Cake  Pudding.     Milk  Pudding. 

Tuesday. 
Veal  and  Ham.     Beefsteak  Pie. 

Greens  and  Potatoes. 

Jam  Roly-Poly.     Milk  Pudding. 

Wednesday. 

Roast   Beef.     Haricot   Mutton.     Rissoles. 

Greens  and  Potatoes. 

Fruit  Salad  and  Sponge  Cake.     Milk  Pudding. 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         179 

Thursday. 

Roast    Mutton.     Stewed   Steak.     Potato    Pie. 

Greens  and  Potatoes. 

Ginger  Pudding.     Milk  Pudding. 

Friday. 

Fish.     Roast  Beef.     Liver  and  Bacon. 

Greens  and  Potatoes. 

Rhubarb  Tart.     Cabinet  Pudding. 

"If  these  menus  reappear  in  the  same  order  or  con- 
nection it  will  be  at  a  very  distant  date.  The  aim  is  to 
supply  all  the  kinds  of  food  necessary,  and  in  a  form  the 
girls  like.  Pies,  stews,  and  rissoles  are  great  favorites, 
stews  being  the  chief.  This  is  fortunate,  because  a  dish 
of  stew  of  any  kind  is  rich  in  fat  and  proteid,  and  if 
vegetables  are  added  it  becomes  rich  in  salts  too.  The 
girls  state  each  day  at  dinner  which  meat  they  wish 
for,  and  they  help  themselves  to  greens  and  potatoes. 
If  they  want  a  second  helping  of  meat  they  can  have  it, 
but  it  is  an  unwritten  law  that  they  must  finish  all  they 
take.  It  is  also  understood  that  if  a  girl  does  not  eat 
her  dinner  she  is  not  fit  for  afternoon  school.  This  rule 
prevents  elder  girls  getting  the  foolish  notion  that  it  is 
not  'nice'  to  have  a  good  appetite. 

"Cookery  is  part  of  the  curriculum,  so  that  sooner  or 
later  every  girl  learns  the  importance  of  food,  and  that 
it  is  useless  to  try  to  'make  bricks  without  straw' — in 
fact,  the  dinners  are  a  practical  illustration  of  the  teach- 
ing in  the  cookery  room." 

The  notion  that  it  is  not  "nice"  for  a  girl  to  have  a 


i8o  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

good  appetite  is  not  so  common  as  it  used  to  be.  Now 
that  we  know  the  importance  of  appetite  to  proper  di- 
gestion this  notion  seems  criminal  as  well  as  silly,  and 
should  be  denounced  as  such  in  all  schools  where  it  may- 
seem  necessary. 

Like  some  of  the  Continental  countries,  England 
now  also  has  traveling  cooking  schools.  According  to 
educational  Blue  Books  issued  in  August,  1912,  the 
record  for  the  teaching  of  domestic  science  in  1910-11 
included  under  the  head  of  cookery  327,526  scholars. 
Concerning  the  traveling  schools  we  read  with  refer- 
ence to  the  North: 

"The  county  authority  have  provided  a  traveling  van 
as  a  center  for  cookery  teaching  throughout  the  country 
districts.  The  van  is  practically  a  movable  room,  care- 
fully planned,  with  satisfactory  arrangements,  and  has 
so  far  answered  admirably. 

*'The  van  remains  for  four  weeks  at  each  school 
visited,  and  where  two  classes  of  girls  can  be  provided, 
lessons  are  given  both  morning  and  afternoon  on  each 
day.  It  is  used  as  a  center  for  classes  formed  from 
other  schools  (if  any)  within  walking  distance.  When 
the  van  was  at  Sutton  some  girls  walked  two  to  three 
miles,  but  made  no  difficulty  about  the  distance.  The 
teacher  is  usually  besieged  by  applications  to  admit 
older  girls — and  even  women — to  the  classes.  House- 
wifery is  now  taught  as  well  as  cookery.  The  van 
makes  a  pleasant  little  room,  and  the  girls  enjoy  their 


FUTURE   OF   COOKING         181 

work  and  do  it  very  well.  The  North  Riding  authority 
have  now  built  a  second  van,  which  is  already  in  use." 

Norfolk  has  a  teacher  who  remains  in  a  village  for  a 
fortnight,  the  children  attending  classes  in  a  convenient 
kitchen  of  a  farmhouse,  adapted  club-room,  barn,  &c., 
all  day  and  every  day  during  the  fortnight. 

The  inspectors  show  that  already  the  influence  of 
these  classes  has  had  a  reflex  in  the  homes. 

PROGRESS    IN    AMERICA. 

As  far  back  as  1835  household  economics  was  taught 
in  young  women's  seminaries  of  the  United  States,  as 
we  are  informed  by  Benjamin  R.  Andrews  of  the 
School  of  Industrial  and  Household  Arts  at  Columbia 
University.  In  1912  there  were  over  130  schools 
which  gave  collegiate  degrees  for  proficiency  in  the 
courses  in  home-making,  and  it  was  clear  from  the  way 
things  were  going  that  ere  long  every  woman's  college 
and  high  school  in  the  country  would  have  a  domestic 
science  department,  if  only  to  meet  the  competition  of 
the  Domestic  Science  schools  which  are  springing  up 
everywhere. 

These  special  schools  for  home-making  turn  out  the 
really  up-to-date  girls — the  girls  whom  young  men 
want  to  marry. 

In  recognition  of  the  growing  importance  of  this 
branch  of  education  Representative  Wilson  of  Illinois 
introduced,  in  1911,  a  bill  providing  that  a  Bureau  of 


i82  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

Domestic  Science  be  established  in  the  Department  of 
Agriculture,  with  the  object  of  investigating  methods 
and  appliances  for  the  preparation  of  food  and  of  gath- 
ering information  to  be  used  in  training  the  boys  as 
well  as  the  girls  of  the  schools  and  colleges  in  house- 
hold and  institutional  management. 

In  1910  there  were  in  the  elementary  schools  of  Chi- 
cago only  75  kitchens  available  for  use  in  giving  the 
girls  practical  instruction  in  the  art  of  cooking.  In 
view  of  the  fact  that  at  least  eight  out  of  every  ten  girls 
in  these  schools  are  fated  to  spend  a  part  of  their  lives 
in  the  kitchen,  the  superintendent  of  schools,  Mrs.  Ella 
Flagg  Young  started  an  agitation  to  have  this  number 
increased  to  250. 

In  commenting  on  this  subject  the  Chicago  "Tribune" 
remarked :  "A  girl  who  has  to  hold  in  after  life  solemn 
communion  with  stewpans  and  gridirons  had  better 
learn  in  advance  how  to  use  them.  It  will  save  her 
mortification,  bitter  tears,  and  scoldings." 

Not  every  husband  takes  the  matter  as  calmly  as  the 
brute  who,  when  his  young  wife  met  him  with  tears  in 
her  eyes  and  the  information  that  the  cat  had  eaten  the 
first  pie  she  had  made  for  him,  replied:  "Don't  cry, 
dear;  we  can  easily  get  another  cat!" 

Bad  cooking  drives  a  man  to  drink  sooner  than  any- 
thing else.  Many  honeymoons  are  shortened  by  home- 
made dyspeptic  pangs.  "Poor  food  ruins  dispositions 
as  well  as  digestions." 


FUTURE   OF   COOKING         183 

"Fashionable  private  schools  are  adding  cookery  to 
their  subjects,"  I  am  informed;  and  the  girls  "have 
lots  of  fun  with  it."  A  wise  thing;  for  even  if  these 
girls  marry  men  who  are  wealthy  enough  to  hire  a  cook 
they  ought  to  know  something  about  culinary  art — the 
more  the  better — so  they  can  tell  the  cook  how  they 
want  things.  Cooks  in  general  are  not  so  bad  as  they 
are  painted.  Many  of  them  are  simply  inexperienced 
and  glad  to  learn  the  better  way.  I  know  this  from 
abundant  experience  in  my  own  household,  and  I  bless 
the  stars  that  I  have  a  wife  who  can  tell  what's  wrong 
and  how  to  mend  it. 

Most  of  the  public  schools  in  New  York  and  many 
other  cities  now  have  courses  in  household  science,  in- 
cluding cooking.  In  the  high  schools  attention  is  given, 
among  other  things,  to  the  adulteration  of  foods  and 
its  detection ;  to  the  effects  of  certain  bacteria,  useful  or 
harmful,  on  foods;  to  nutritive  values;  to  the  physiol- 
ogy of  digestion;  to  money  and  labor-saving  appli- 
ances; nursing  and  diet  for  the  sick;  cost  of  living; 
home  sanitation;  home-made  fireless  cookers;  food 
adulteration;  cooking  as  a  moral  agent;  etc.  The 
courses  vary  somewhat  in  different  schools,  but  that 
all  of  them  tend  to  domestic  happiness  and  lowering 
of  the  death  rate  is  certain. 

There  are  indications  that  working  girls  are  begin- 
ning to  realize  the  gross  injustice  of  marrying  without 
having  learned  how  to  cook  a  palatable  and  digestible 


i84  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

meal.  The  New  York  "Sun"  of  January  15,  191 1,  had 
an  interesting  article  telling  how  Miss  Mary  E.  Brock- 
man  started  evening  classes  in  cooking,  largely  for  girls 
about  to  be  married.  Some  of  them  have  worked  in 
factories  and  shops  for  years,  yet  "hardly  know  an  egg- 
beater  from  a  potato-ricer."  "They  are  eager  to  learn 
and  make  good  pupils."  "It  might  seem  hard  to  work 
all  day  in  a  factory  and  spend  two  or  three  hours  in  the 
evening  mixing  flour  or  braising  meat,  but  evidently 
several  hundred  young  women  find  it  almost  a  relaxa- 
tion. Once  started,  the  subject  becomes  increasingly 
fascinating." 

"Increasingly  fascinating."  Bear  that  in  mind.  In 
cooking,  as  in  piano-playing,  and  everything  else,  the 
drudgery  comes  first,  but  increasing  skill  brings  satis- 
faction and  joy  to  the  artist  cook — not  to  speak  of  the 
husband,  the  children,  and  the  guests.  And  this  joy 
lasts  as  long  as  life  itself. 

There  is  in  New  York  an  Association  for  the  Im- 
provement of  the  Condition  of  the  Poor  which,  in  191 1, 
was  teaching  50,000  "little  mothers"  how  to  cook 
while  their  parents  are  away  working.  One  of  its  main 
objects  is  to  show  the  families  how  to  economize  intelli- 
gently.  The  fact  that  so  many  children  as  well  as 
adults  in  our  cities  are  so  undernourished  and  so  liable 
to  disease  is  largely  due  to  the  spending  of  money  on 
foolish,  unnutritious,  or  harmful  things.  By  simply 
substituting  cereals  and  soups  for  their  poisonous  tea 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         185 

and  soggy  cake,  thousands  of  suffering  families  can  be 
rescued.  The  Little  Mothers  even  get  some  simple 
notions  as  to  the  chemistry  of  food  and  the  advisability 
of  not  having  too  much  of  one  kind,  as  the  following, 
from  the  New  York  "Evening  Post,"  shows  : 

"Girls,"  said  Mrs.  Burns  to  a  group  of  small  cooks  one  day, 
"I  am  going  to  give  a  luncheon,  and  this  is  what  I  am  going  to 
have:  bean  soup,  pot  roast,  canned  corn,  white  potatoes,  and 
rice  pudding.  Do  you  think  that  will  make  a  nice  luncheon?" 
Up  came  a  small  hand.  "Well,  what  is  it?"  asked  Mrs.  Burns. 
"Too  much  starch,"  said  the  solemn  cook. 

A  book  will  doubtless  be  written  some  day  showing 
by  vivid  illustrations  how  many  of  the  problems  of 
charity, — crime,  poverty,  and  the  prevention  of  dis- 
ease and  intemperance — can  be  solved  by  attention  to 
rational  cooking. 

Ignorant  feeding  kills  thousands  of  infants  every 
month  the  country  over.  It  is  therefore  a  crime  not  to 
include  food  and  feeding  in  the  subjects  of  study  in 
schools — all  the  more  as  most  girls  get  no  instruction 
whatever  after  they  leave  school  at  fourteen. 

There  will  be  fewer  complaints  about  high  prices 
when  all  girls  are  taught  not  only  how  to  prepare  a 
meal  but  how  to  buy  food  knowingly.  As  the  New 
York  "World"  has  forcibly  remarked:  "If  women 
would  pay  half  as  much  attention  to  the  fluctuating 
prices  of  food  as  they  pay  to  the  prices  of  dress  goods, 
as  the  men  pay  to  the  stock-ticker — and  shop  half 


i86  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

as  assiduously  for  the  one  as  they  do  for  the  other, 
one  of  the  worst  phases  of  the  high-cost-of-living  prob- 
lem would  be  met  at  the  start." 

It  is  almost  startling  to  find  that  the  schooling  of 
boys  and  girls  in  domestic  science  works  the  miracle  of 
solving  the  important  problem  of  how  to  keep  boys  and 
girls  on  the  farm. 

Professor  Benson  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture 
relates  how,  in  1907,  he  asked  the  teachers  of  thirty- 
four  schools  in  Iowa  how  many  of  the  boys  and  girls 
expected  to  remain  on  the  farm  when  grown  up.  The 
answers  were  most  discouraging.  Provision  was  then 
made  for  giving  up-to-date  instruction  in  scientific 
farming  to  the  boys  and  in  rational  household  manage- 
ment to  the  girls.  Three  years  later  account  was  again 
taken,  and  it  was  found  that  whereas  in  1907  all  but 
1 1  out  of  174  girls  wanted  to  leave  the  farm,  in  1910, 
after  being  educated,  only  17  out  of  178  girls  persisted 
in  going  to  the  city. 

Progress  in  America  is  being  greatly  accelerated  by 
the  various  women's  clubs  which  are  working  in  the 
interest  of  the  food  question.  Also,  by  "Good  House- 
keeping," "The  Ladies'  Home  Journal,"  "The  Wo- 
man's Home  Companion,"  "The  Housekeeper,"  and  a 
host  of  other  magazines,  which  monthly  publish  not 
only  columns  of  recipes  but  helpful  articles  of  all  sorts 
bearing  on  household  science  and  management. 

All  things  considered  the  outlook  seems  bright. 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         187 

Characteristically  American  are  the  free  lectures  on 
cooking,  with  demonstrations,  given  in  some  of  our 
large  department  stores.  Good  is  also  done  by  the 
booklets  enclosed  in  many  packages  of  food  telling  the 
purchaser  of  various  ways  of  cooking  it,  alone  or  in 
diverse  combinations.  Surely,  we  are  on  the  way  to 
becoming  a  gastronomic  nation! 

TEACHING    THE    ART    OF    EATING. 

It  is  not  enough  that  girls  and  boys  at  school 
should  be  taught  to  cook;  they  should  also  learn  how 
to  eat. 

Few  learn  this  at  home.  They  are  usually  taught 
table  etiquette:  that  they  must  eat  silently,  and  not 
take  soup  off  the  end  of  a  spoon  (though  that  is  the 
only  rational  way  of  doing  it)  or  put  the  knife  into  the 
mouth ;  but  the  infinitely  more  important  art  of  masti- 
cation is  entirely  ignored. 

The  art  of  eating  is  a  branch  of  physiology  and 
should  be  taught  in  all  schools  by  experts,  the  earlier  the 
better.  If  it  were  thus  taught  the  next  generation  of 
mothers  and  fathers  would  know  that  it  is  a  crime  to  let 
their  children  swallow  food,  particularly  milk  and 
cereals  and  vegetables,  before  it  has  been  kept  for  a 
while  in  the  mouth  to  be  mixed  with  saliva  and  thus 
made  digestible. 

Children  (and  most  adults,  too,)  are  like  animals: 
give  them  something  good  to  eat  and  they  gulp  it  down 


i88  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

eagerly  and  then  look  around  for  more  to  stuff  into 
their  unfortunate  stomachs. 

When  I  was  a  boy,  a  story  in  one  of  the  readers, 
entitled  "The  Stomach's  Complaint,"  made  an  indeli- 
ble impression  on  my  mind,  and  saved  me  many  hours 
of  the  distress  caused  by  overeating,  eating  too  fast,  or 
eating  or  drinking  things  too  hot  or  too  cold. 

It  should  be  indelibly  impressed  on  all  school  chil- 
dren that  gluttony  is  a  vice  which  defeats  its  own  end^ 
and  that  by  eating  very  slowly  much  more  pleasure  can 
he  got  from  one  mouthful  than  by  bolting  a  whole 
plateful. 

One  stick  of  candy  can  be  made  to  yield  more  "linked 
sweetness  long-drawn-out"  than  a  dozen  sticks  as 
usually  devoured.  Moreover,  one  stick  will  not  cause 
hours  of  discomfort  as  the  dozen  sticks  surely  will ;  and, 
in  addition,  it  will  cost  much  less,  thus  leaving  plenty 
of  money  to  spend  on  other  things.  Surely  this  argu- 
ment must  appeal  to  all  children  who  have  brains 
enough  to  be  worth  schooling. 

Every  child  should  also  be  told  over  and  over  again, 
till  the  habit  is  formed,  that  the  pleasure  derived  from 
candy  and  cake  and  all  food  can  be  vastly  increased 
and  intensified  by  consciously  breathing  out  through 
the  nose  while  eating  (as  explained  on  pages  62-3) 
and  that  this  will  be  a  further  protection  from  indiges- 
tion. 

If  these  truths  were  firmly  impressed  on  all  child 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         189 

minds,  two-thirds  of  the  minor  ills  of  mankind  would 
disappear  in  two  generations,  and  most  of  the  major 
maladies  also ;  for  let  me  say  it  once  more,  the  stomach 
is  the  source  of  most  preventable  diseases. 

REAL    EPICURISM    IS    ECONOMICAL. 

The  future  of  cooking  and  eating  lies  in  the  hands  of 
millions  of  boys  and  girls  now  in  our  schools. 

It  should  be  made  clear  to  them  how  important  it  is 
to  their  welfare  to  be  real  epicures, — that  is,  persons 
who  never  eat  too  much,  who  select  their  food  with  a 
fastidious  taste,  and  refuse  to  eat  any  that  has  no 
Flavor,  or  a  wrong  Flavor. 

Were  all  of  us,  or  most  of  us,  epicures,  what  a  change 
our  markets  would  undergo !  How  the  chemically  de- 
natured foods,  the  tainted  cold-storage  fowls,  the 
drugged,  soggy  bread,  the  tasteless,  frozen  butchers' 
meats,  would  be  swept  away,  together  with  frozen,  un- 
palatable fish,  wilted  vegetables,  unclean  milk,  unripe 
and  decayed  fruits,  all  of  them  the  daily  source  of  dis- 
comforts and  disease  (often  including  ptomaine  poison- 
ing) to  thousands. 

We  must  become  a  nation  of  epicures.  To  be  sure, 
were  we  all  as  fastidious  as  gourmets  are,  only  the  best 
foods  would  be  tolerated  in  the  markets,  and  these  cost 
more  than  the  inferior  grades.  But  that  will  not  worry 
any  one  who  bears  in  mind  the  three  cardinal  principles 


igo  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

of  gastronomy  which  I  am  trying  to  emphasize  in  this 
book: 

I.  The  food  from  which  we  chiefly  derive  our  nouT' 
ishment  is  for  the  most  part  cheap. 

II.  We  need  more  or  less  expensive  -flavor  in  food 
to  make  it  appetizing  and  digestible;  but,  fortunately, 

III.  We  need  very  little  of  the  savory  material  to 
flavor  a  bountiful  meal. 

Were  we  a  nation  of  epicures,  making  daily  practical 
application  of  these  three  cardinal  principles  of  culinary 
knowledge,  we  could  easily,  though  getting  always  the 
best  material,  live  much  more  cheaply  than  we  do  now. 

Count  Rumford,  in  a  report  on  dietary  experiments 
made  by  him  in  behalf  of  the  Bavarian  Government 
with  its  army,  dwelt  particularly  on  the  fact,  demon- 
strated by  these  trials,  that  much  more  depends  on  the 
art  and  skill  of  the  cook  than  on  the  sums  laid  out  in  the 
market. 

The  brain  is  mightier  than  the  purse.  With  brains 
in  the  kitchen  you  can  live  better  on  two  or  three  thou- 
sand a  year  than  on  ten  times  that  sum  without  brains. 

To  solve  the  high-cost-of-food  problem  we  should 
therefore  above  all  things  labor  to  get  educated  cooks 
into  our  kitchens. 

Educated  cooks  can  save  us  money.  The  more  they 
save  us,  the  more  we  can  afford  to  pay  them;  and  the 
more  we  pay,  the  easier  will  it  become  to  persuade 
young  women  and  men  to  become  trained  cooks. 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         191 

Let  us,  therefore,  with  all  our  might  and  main  en- 
deavor to  make  the  culinary  art  and  science  an  honored 
profession,  to  which  any  one  may  feel  proud  to  belong. 

Fortunately,  apart  from  all  the  things  just  consid- 
ered which  make  for  the  popularity  of  cooking  as  a  pro- 
fession, there  are  others  of  the  utmost  importance  which 
must  now  be  dwelt  on. 

In  most  hesitating  minds  one  of  the  chief  objections 
to  cooking  as  at  present  practised  is  the  drudgery  it 
involves.  This  drudgery  is  now  being  eliminated  and 
will  in  a  decade  or  two  be  reduced  to  a  minimum. 

FIRELESS    COOKERS. 

While  President  Tylor  of  the  British  Anthropologi- 
cal Institute  was  doubtless  right  in  holding  the  opinion 
(already  referred  to)  that  cookery  has  done  more  than 
any  other  art  to  help  mankind  in  its  progress  from  sav- 
agery to  civilization,  it  is  odd  that  the  latest  and 
socially,  as  well  as  gastronomically,  most  important 
phase  of  this  art  takes  us  back  to  practices  similar  to 
those  of  primitive  man.  When  Darwin,  in  his  voyage 
round  the  world,  tarried  in  Tahiti,  his  native  guides  on 
a  trip  to  the  interior  prepared  for  him  a  meal  which  he 
greatly  enjoyed.  It  consisted  of  pieces  of  beef,  fish, 
and  bananas,  wrapped  in  large  leaves  and  placed 
between  hot  stones,  which  were  then  covered  with  earth 
to  keep  in  the  heat.  In  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the 
viands  were  "most  deliciously  cooked." 


192  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

One  who  has  never  had  the  good  luck  to  taste,  at  a 
New  England  picnic,  beans  baked  in  the  ground  really 
does  not  know  beans,  though  his  home  be  in  Boston. 
Nor  does  any  one  know  the  epicurean  possibilities  in- 
herent in  sea-food  unless  he  has  attended  a  shore  clam- 
bake, at  which  lobsters,  clams,  and  fish,  just  out  of  the 
water  and  wrapped  in  layers  of  seaweed,  were  cooked 
over  heated  stones,  the  whole  being  covered  with  more 
seaweed  to  prevent  the  escape  of  the  heat  and  the 
flavors. 

In  these  customs  we  have  a  survival  of  the  primitive 
method  of  cooking  praised  by  Darwin  and  numerous 
explorers  and  missionaries.  Many  of  the  benighted 
dwellers  in  our  cities  have  never  even  heard  of  them; 
but  within  the  last  few  years  thousands  of  our  kitchens 
have  been  provided  with  an  apparatus  which  combines 
the  advantages  of  Tahitian  cooking  and  Rhode  Island 
clam-bakes  with  modern  conveniences — the  cooking- 
boxes,  or  iireless  cookers,  which  many  rival  manufac- 
turers are  now  turning  out  by  wholesale,  and  which  are 
destined,  in  combination  with  gas  and  electricity,  to 
bring  about  within  the  next  ten  years  a  domestic  revo- 
lution so  complete  and  far-reaching  that  future  his- 
torians, in  summing  up  the  great  achievements  of  the 
first  quarter  of  the  twentieth  century,  will  probably 
name  as  the  three  most  important  ones  wireless  telegra- 
phy, aviation,  and  fireless  cookery. 

Even  in  this  rich  country,  only  one  family  in  ten  can 


Fireless  cookery  in  Hawaii 


194  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

afford  to  hire  a  cook,  and  in  the  far  West  such  a  person 
is  seldom  obtainable  at  any  price.  Now,  by  the  fireless 
cooker  all  women  who  have  to  prepare  their  own  meals 
are  fast  being  emancipated  from  the  hot-stove  slavery, 
which  is  particularly  cruel  in  our  sultry  summers.  It 
makes  it  possible  for  them  to  cook  breakfast,  luncheon, 
and  dinner  at  the  same  time,  in  perhaps  an  hour,  leaving 
the  rest  of  the  day  free  for  other  work.  All  they  have 
to  do  is  to  heat  the  meat,  vegetables,  cereals,  or  other 
viands  on  the  stove  for  some  minutes  (varying  with  dif- 
ferent foods),  and  then  put  them  into  the  air-tight  box, 
which,  being  lined  with  non-conducting  substances, 
cooks  them  thoroughly,  retaining  all  their  flavors,  keep- 
ing them  hot  for  six  hours,  and  warm  for  five  or  six 
longer. 

There  is  a  tradition  among  mistresses  that  cooks 
resent  innovations  in  the  kitchen;  but  no  domestic 
helper  will  ever  balk  at  a  box  which  eliminates  so  much 
of  the  kitchen  drudgery. 

The  fireless  cooker  will  therefore  go  far  toward  solv- 
ing the  most  difficult  of  all  domestic  problems — that  of 
getting  some  one  to  help  us  in  our  kitchens. 

It  is  strange  that  this  important  service  for  simplify- 
ing cooking  should  have  had  to  wait  till  the  twentieth 
century  for  its  general  adoption.  Its  principle  was 
known  to  the  ancient  Hebrews.  Charles  XII  got  on 
the  trail  when  he  cooked  a  fat  hen  while  on  the  march 
by  inserting  within  it  a  piece  of  hot  steel,  the  whole 


FUTURE   OF   COOKING         195 

being  placed  in  a  tin  box  which  was  wrapped  in  a 
woolen  cloth  and  strapped  on  a  soldier's  back. 

It  was  in  the  far  North  that  the  possibilities  of  this 
procedure  were  first  appreciated  in  modern  times.  The 
general  attention  of  Europe  was  directed  at  the  Paris 
Exposition  of  1867  to  what  was  called  the  "Norwegian 
automatic  kitchen" — a  box  in  which  food  that  had  been 
heated  to  boiling  point  for  a  few  minutes  continued  to 
cook  slowly  till  done. 

One  would  have  supposed  that  such  a  wonderful 
saver  of  fuel,  time,  and  trouble  must  have  been  adopted 
universally  within  a  few  years,  all  the  more  as  any  one 
could  construct  his  own  cooker  out  of  an  ordinary  box 
lined  with  felt,  hay,  paper,  sawdust,  or  some  other  poor 
conductor  of  heat.  But  years  passed  and  little  was 
done  until  some  enthusiasts,  prominent  among  whom 
was  the  Grand  Duchess  of  Baden,  took  up  the  propa- 
ganda. 

Then  came  the  era  of  auto  pianos  and  automobiles 
and  auto  everything.  The  automatic  cooker  was  no 
longer  a  solitary  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness.  The 
manufacturers  took  it  up,  and  now,  especially  in  the 
United  States,  thousands  are  sold  every  day. 

Already  there  are  nearly  as  many  "makes"  of  them  as 
there  are  of  pianos  or  automobiles,  each  claiming  special 
advantages  over  all  others.  With  the  best  of  them, 
boiling,  steaming,  broiling,  baking,  frying,  roasting — 
everything,  except  crisping  and  toasting — can  be  done 


196  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

with  satisfactory  results.  Soups  and  stews,  in  partic- 
ular, which  require  hours  of  slow  cooking  at  moderate 
heat,  come  out  of  these  cookers  with  a  delicious  flavor. 

From  the  gastronomic  and  dietetic  points  of  view 
the  most  important  of  all  the  claims  made  for  the  fire- 
less  cooker  is  that  the  food  flavors  previously  dissipated 
through  the  whole  house  as  "kitchen  odors"  are  retained 
in  the  meats  and  vegetables,  making  them  exceptionally 
savory  and  appetizing. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  these  cookers  are  of  no  use 
for  broiling  or  frying  steaks,  chops,  bacon,  ham,  sau- 
sages, or  griddle  cakes,  which  require  only  a  few 
minutes  to  cook  and  must  be  crisp  to  be  enjoyable. 

Nor  will  the  presence  of  a  cooker  make  it  any  the 
less  necessary  for  the  mistress  or  the  professional  cook 
to  thoroughly  understand  the  culinary  art.  They  must 
know  about  meats,  and  cereals,  and  vegetables,  and 
flavors,  and  their  combinations  and  extension,  to  which 
attention  has  been  called.  It  is  simply,  in  all  house- 
holds, valuable  because  it  preserves  flavors,  eliminates 
the  danger  of  burning  or  overcooking,  reduces  the  cost 
of  fuel  by  three-fourths  or  more,  makes  it  easier  to 
wash  the  pots  and  in  other  ways  saves  no  end  of 
drudgery;  while  for  those  who  have  to  do  their  own 
cooking  its  advantages  in  giving  leisure  for  other  work, 
or  diversions  while  the  cooking  goes  on,  are  incalcu- 
lable. The  best  of  all  wedding  presents  is  a  fireless 
cooker. 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         197 

Automobilists  and  excursionists  in  general  are  find- 
ing  these  boxes  a  great  convenience.  They  have  also 
been  used  in  the  army. 

Many  women  whose  work  is  away  from  home  hardly 
have  even  as  much  time  to  spare  as  is  needed  for  start- 
ing a  meal  in  the  cooker.  It  is  likely  that  restaurant- 
keepers  and  other  caterers  will  be  more  and  more  called 
upon  to  prepare  specially  ordered  meals  for  such  cases 
and  send  them  in  the  heat-retaining  boxes  in  which  they 
were  made.  Expert  cooks,  in  all  probability,  will  go 
from  house  to  house  to  start  the  cookers. 

PRIVATE    VERSUS    COMMUNITY    KITCHENS. 

There  is  a  future  here  for  various  new  kinds  of  cul- 
inary work.  But  for  one  kind,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  there 
is  no  future,  and  that  is  the  community  kitchen — a 
single  kitchen  for  a  number  of  families.  This  plan  has 
been  tried  in  various  countries,  always  without  success. 
Berlin  had  its  ''Einkiichenhaus" — for  a  time.  The 
New  York  "Independent"  of  March  6,  1912,  contains 
an  account  of  a  similar  experiment  in  America.  A 
dozen  women  presided  in  succession  with  invariably 
disastrous  results. 

It  is  impossible  in  such  a  case  to  suit  the  taste  and 
purse  of  every  family.  In  a  large  restaurant  it  is  pos- 
sible to  cater  to  every  patron's  wishes,  but  where  there 
are  half-a-dozen  or  a  dozen  families  clubbed  together, 
some  are  willing  to  pay  for  fresh  eggs  and  poultry  and 


198  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

unsalted  butter,  for  example,  while  others  would  prefer 
to  save  the  money  and  live  on  storage  eggs  and  poultry, 
salted  butter,  wilted  or  canned  vegetables,  and  so  on. 
There  is  sure  to  be  constant  squabbling;  troubles  arise 
from  feeing,  bribing,  and  a  hundred  other  sources. 
No ;  most  of  us  want  to  be  able  to  order  our  own  meats, 
vegetables  and  fruits,  and  have  them  cooked  and  served 
as  we  like  them. 

"It  was  the  fashion  of  forty  years  ago,"  wrote  E.  P. 
Powell  in  1904,  "for  progressive  economists  to  discuss 
a  reform  village,  built  in  squares,  one  house  on  each 
corner,  and  a  community  boarding-hall  and  kitchen  in 
the  center  of  each  square.  Some  experiments  were 
made  along  such  lines,  but  they  fell  to  pieces  over  the 
table  question.  It  is  not  easy  for  four  families  to  agree 
on  a  menu  three  times  a  day,  and  on  the  qualities  of  the 
cooking.  As  a  rule  every  woman  must  be  mistress  of 
her  own  kitchen." 

The  German  delicatessen  store  (now  acclimated  in 
all  our  cities)  with  its  cooked  cold  meats,  pickles, 
cheeses,  and  diverse  fancy  groceries,  is  likely  to  be  the 
nearest  approach  to  a  community  kitchen  (nearly  every 
block  has  one)  that  the  future  will  know;  and  the  deli- 
catessen store  is  only  an  appendix  to  the  private  kitchen. 

Nothing  could  be  more  ridiculous  than  the  wails  of 
certain  writers  over  the  "waste  of  time"  in  having  the 
cooking  done  separately  for  each  family.  There  are 
plenty  of  persons  in  search  of  profitable  employment 


FUTURE    OF   COOKING         199 

to  supply  the  demand;  and  surely,  it  is  infinitely  more 
human,  more  intellectual,  more  enjoyable  to  practise 
the  noble  and  useful  art  of  cooking  than  to  be  merely 
one  cog  in  a  huge  machine  for  making  shoes  or  garments, 
or  cigarettes,  as  are  hundreds  of  thousands  of  factory 
workers,  most  of  whom  could  lead  much  happier  and 
more  elevated  lives  if  they  were  cooks. 

"The  gourmet  distrusts  dishes  provided  by  pastry 
cooks  and  caterers,"  wrote  the  late  Theodore  Child;  and 
this  is  another  of  the  many  reasons  why  every  family 
that  can  afford  it  should  have  its  own  cook.  I  have 
never  yet  eaten  ice  cream,  even  in  the  most  expensive 
places,  as  rich  and  luscious  as  the  cream  we  make  at 
home.  Excellent  jams  and  jellies  are  now  for  sale  in 
the  markets;  but  in  your  own  kitchen  you  and  your 
helpers  can  make  jams  and  jellies,  and  preserves  that 
are  better  still — made  of  material  you  have  seen,  and 
sweetened,  or  otherwise  seasoned,  to  your  individual 
taste. 

The  word  home-made  is  still  the  synonym  of  gas- 
tronomic excellence.  When  a  dealer  wants  to  specially 
commend  his  offerings,  he  labels  or  advertises  them  as 
"home-made." 

Owing  partly  to  the  present  difficulty  of  getting 
good  cooks,  and  partly  to  the  selfish  disinclination  of 
too  many  American  women  to  do  as  much  at  home  for 
their  husband  or  father  as  the  husband  or  father  does 
for  them  in  the  office,  thousands  of  homes  have  been 


200  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

abandoned  in  favor  of  apartment  hotels.  How  these 
families  can  endure  the  insipid,  monotonous,  unap- 
petizing meals  served  in  these  (for  the  most  part  ex- 
pensive) places,  is  to  me  incomprehensible. 

A  reaction  will  come  in  favor  of  private  kitchens, 
and  it  will  be  greatly  accelerated  by  the  latest  improve- 
ments, now  to  be  considered. 

SCIENTIFIC    ELECTRIC    COOKING. 

In  the  average  household  the  use  of  a  cooking  box 
does  not  do  away  entirely  with  the  smoke,  soot,  heat, 
ashes,  and  kitchen  odors,  because  of  the  need  of  heating 
the  food  on  a  stove  for  five  minutes  to  half  an  hour 
before  it  is  put  into  the  air-tight  box.  The  use  of  gas- 
stoves  does  away  with  most  of  these  nuisances,  while 
electricity  abolishes  them  altogether,  besides  removing 
the  danger  of  fire,  keeping  the  air  clean  and  cool,  and 
enabling  one  to  cook  in  any  part  of  the  house  at  any 
desired  minute. 

Electric  cooking  is  still  in  its  infancy,  but  the  child 
is  growing  rapidly.  At  the  Chicago  Exposition  of 
1893  utensils  were  shown  in  considerable  variety — 
chafing-dishes,  stew-pans,  coffee-pots,  teapots,  broilers, 
griddles,  etc.  Since  that  time  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  dollars  have  been  spent  in  devising  improvements, 
and  at  the  electric  exhibition  in  New  York  in  191 1  the 
cooking-utensils  were  so  prominent  and  boasted  so  many 
improvements  that  it  seemed  as  though  the  time  had 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         201 

come  for  their  general  introduction  into  homes  and 
hotels. 

The  United  States  Government  has  taken  the  lead 
by  recommending  electric  ranges  for  future  use  on 
battleships,  after  experiments  had  been  made  showing 
that  the  change  would  result  in  greater  economy  of 
time,  space,  and  money,  not  to  speak  of  cleanliness,  or 
of  the  better  quality  of  the  cooked  food,  because  of 
the  uniform  distribution  of  the  heat. 

For  home  use,  electricity  is  still  in  most  localities 
comparatively  expensive,  but  it  will  be  less  so  when 
it  comes  into  more  general  use.  If  the  electric  com- 
panies would  more  frequently  follow  the  example  of 
the  gas  companies  in  renting  cooking-ranges,  it  would 
be  a  great  stride  forward.  In  England  some  of  the 
companies  charge  a  special  low  rate  for  electric  cooking, 
because  it  is  done  mostly  in  the  day  time,  when  there 
is  little  demand  for  the  current  for  lighting  purposes. 

But  the  most  radical  way  to  reduce  the  cost  is  to 
combine  the  electric  range  with  the  iireless  cooker. 
Thousands  of  families  that  can  not  pay  for  an  elec- 
tric current  five  or  six  hours  a  day  could  easily  afford 
one  for  the  fifteen  minutes  necessary  for  heating  the 
food  before  it  is  put  into  the  box,  besides  the  few 
minutes  needed  for  crisping  roasts,  brewing  coffee,  or 
toasting  bread. 

In  1911,  fancying  myself  a  prophet  of  great  things 
to  happen,  I  wrote :  "It  is  quite  likely  that  the  electric 


202  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

range  can  be  so  constructed  in  part  that  no  separate 
cooking-box  will  be  needed;  and  then  the  culinary  mil- 
lennium." 

The  "Edison  Monthly"  reprinted  my  remarks  and  in 
an  editorial  promptly  informed  me  that  what  I  had 
voiced  as  a  mere  possibility  for  the  future  was  already 
a  fact :  that  electric  fireless  cookers  had  been  put  out  by 
several  manufacturers  more  than  a  year  before  my 
article  appeared.  It  was  a  pleasant  surprise  to  find 
that  this  was  literally  true;  that  my  imagined  "mil- 
lennium cookers"  were  actually  in  the  market. 

In  Chicago,  on  September  15,  1910,  the  following 
menu  was  served  to  nineteen  persons  in  an  electric  shop : 

Consomme  Julienne 

Radishes  Olives  Celery 

Prime  Roast  Beef 

Mashed  Potatoes  Lima  Beans 

Combination  Salad 

Fresh  Peach  Short  Cake 

Coffee 

This  meal  was  cooked  in  two  hours;  and  by  using 
high  heat  only  so  long  as  necessary  (on  the  "cooker" 
principle)  and  then  turning  down  the  electric  current 
the  cost  was  made  as  low  as  only  a  trifle  over  a  cent  and 
a  quarter  per  person. 

For  dishes  requiring  only  a  short  time  to  prepare,  the 
following  details  have  been  given: 

"A  toaster  can  be  used  for  fifteen  minutes  at  a  cost 


FUTURE   OF   COOKING        203 

of  1^  cents;  fried  oysters  with  bacon,  prepared  in  the 
blazer  of  an  electric  stove  consumes  2  cents'  worth  of 
current;  to  prepare  creamed  oysters  costs  if  cents; 
finnan  haddie,  2  cents;  lobster  a  la  Newburg,  2  cents; 
chicken  and  mushrooms,  2 J  cents;  spring  chicken,  2 J 
cents;  lamb  chops  with  vegetables,  2 J  cents;  sweet- 
breads, 2 J  cents;  plain  omelet,  i|  cents;  cheese  omelet, 
2  cents;  Spanish  omelet,  2^  cents.  To  boil  eggs  the 
water-cup  may  be  used  on  the  dining-room  table  and 
one  cup  of  water  can  be  boiled  for  ij  cents;  Welsh 
rarebit  may  be  made  for  i|  cents;  griddle  cakes  baked 
on  the  electric  stove  for  2 J  cents  for  ij  hours'  opera- 
tion." 

West  London  in  the  autumn  of  1912  had  two  pri- 
vate restaurants  in  which  all  the  cooking  was  done  by 
electricity,  1,200  meals  being  provided  daily  for  the 
staff  of  a  large  establishment. 

In  the  London  "Daily  Mail"  of  November  2,  1912, 
the  following  appeared : 

An  interesting  test  made  in  a  small  middle-class  home  gives 
the  entire  cost  of  the  day's  cooking  at  6d.  Beginning  first  thing 
in  the  morning,  the  time  and  amount  of  electricity  used  were 
carefully  noted.  For  early  morning  tea  the  boiler  or  kettle 
of  the  electric  range  boiled  rather  more  than  two  pints  of  water 
in  four  minutes,  the  electricity  used  equaling  less  than  one-fifth 
of  a  penny.  The  whole  cooking  of  the  breakfast  took  ten  min- 
utes, the  electricity  used  being  less  than  7-ioth  of  a  unit,  equal- 
ing an  expenditure  of  just  under  fd.  The  menu  was  five 
rashers  of  bacon  and  toast  cooked  on  the  grill  In  less  than  seven 


204  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

minutes,  five  eggs  boiled  on  a  ring,  and  coffee  made  from  the 
rapid  boiler. 

The  midday  meat  meal  consisted  of  an  8  lb.  joint,  potatoes, 
and  other  vegetables  for  five  people,  milk  pudding,  and  coffee. 
The  electric  oven  retains  the  heat  so  well  that  the  pudding  was 
placed  in  the  oven  after  the  joint  was  removed  and  the  electric- 
ity switched  off,  the  retained  heat  being  sufficient  to  cook  it; 
2|  units,  or  2|d.,  cooked  this  meal. 

Tea  time  cost  ^d.  for  tea,  hot  grill  cakes,  and  toast,  and  sup- 
per with  a  hot  dish  id.  During  the  day  water  was  boiled, 
cakes  baked,  and  some  soup  simmered,  at  the  cost  of  another 
unit. 

The  advance  of  the  electric  cooker  can  be  gauged  by  the 
statement  of  the  electric  supply  companies,  who  affirm  that 
where  they  had  but  six  private  houses  using  cookers  last  Christ- 
mas they  have  200  this  year;  or  by  the  statements  of  the  users, 
who  say  that  they  have  no  desire  to  return  to  old  methods. 
Many  big  business  houses  have  complete  electric  installations  in 
their  kitchens. 

Electricity  in  the  kitchen  will  make  cooking  an  exact 
science.  No  longer  will  diners  be  obliged  to  rely  on 
the  cook's  "instinct"  or  "knack,"  which  too  often  fail. 
With  the  electric  appliances  the  temperature  can  be 
controlled  to  a  degree,  and  special  switches  permit  fast, 
medium,  or  slow  rates  of  cooking. 

From  the  economic  point  of  view  the  most  satis- 
factory electric  ranges  are  of  course  those  in  which  the 
current  shuts  off  automatically,  while  the  dinner  con- 
tinues to  cook  with  no  further  expense,  the  stove  taking 
on  the  iireless  cooker  principle. 

Further  advantages  claimed  for  electric  cooking  are 


FUTURE   OF   COOKING        205 

that  the  loss  of  weight  in  meat  while  cooking  is  greatly 
reduced,  and  that  the  results  obtained  by  it  have  the 
advantages  of  the  paper-bag  cooking,  which  has  come 
so  much  into  use  within  a  few  years  because  of  its 
cleanliness  and  its  value  in  preserving  the  food  flavors 
which  in  ordinary  cooking  are  so  lamentably  dissi- 
pated. 

Electric  chafing  dishes,  toasters  of  various  kinds, 
coffee  percolators  and  tea  kettles,  waffle  irons,  boilers, 
stew  and  frying  pans,  are  now  at  the  service  of  all  who 
have  electricity  in  the  house.  Nor  is  this  all.  There 
are,  besides,  bread  and  cake  mixers,  coffee  grinders, 
food  choppers,  ice  cream  freezers,  egg  beaters,  vegeta- 
ble slicers,  food  graters,  apple  peelers,  knife  sharpeners 
and  polishers — all  of  them  run  by  the  electric  current. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  housewife  and  the  cook  of  the 
future,  instead  of  feeling  like  a  drudge  in  a  smoky, 
smelly,  overheated  kitchen,  will  have  the  dignity  of 
workers  in  a  cool,  clean  laboratory  for  the  scientific 
preparation  of  savory  food  and  the  abolition  of  dys- 
pepsia. 

The  editor  of  the  electric  magazine  referred  to  indi- 
cates another  important  result  of  this  agreeable  trans- 
formation of  the  kitchen.  Caste  feeling  is  largely  a 
matter  of  dress.  "The  poorest  stenographer  is  a  lady, 
because,  in  so  far  as  her  stipend  permits,  she  dresses  like 
a  lady.  Accordingly,  she  looks  down  upon  the  cook 
drawing  the  same  wages  and  'keep,'  because  the  cook 


2o6  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

works  with  red  face  and  streaming  hair  over  a  hot 
stove."  But  in  the  electric  kitchen  of  the  future  the 
cook  will  be  able  to  be  as  neatly  dressed  as  if  she  were 
presiding  over  a  glove  counter;  and  this  will  act  as  a 
great  social  leveler. 

The  cook's  work  will  also  be  lightened  by.  the  grow- 
ing practice  of  preparing  food  and  drink  on  the  dining- 
room  table,  to  have  it  hot,  and  with  the  flavor  at  its  best. 
The  choicest  coffee,  for  instance,  is  usually  spoiled  by 
being  prepared  carelessly  in  the  kitchen.  Epicures 
make  their  own  coffee  and  tea;  they  are  also  able  now 
to  have  better  toast  than  ever  comes  from  the  kitchen 
by  making  it  on  the  table  in  an  electric  toaster.  Eggs 
and  bacon,  taken  sizzling  from  the  electric  frying  stove 
and  eaten  out  of  the  pan,  have  a  richness  of  flavor  that 
will  astonish  those  who  have  never  tried  them  this  way ; 
and  the  same  is  true  of  many  other  breakfast  and  lunch 
dishes. 

IMPORTANCE  OF  VARIETY  IN  FOODS. 

It  is  likely  that  in  the  development  of  electric  cook- 
ing inventive  America  will  lead  Europe.  But  in  other 
respects  the  American  cooking  of  the  future  will  have 
to  borrow  many  useful  hints  from  the  older  and  more 
experienced  nations  of  Europe. 

We  need,  especially,  greater  variety  in  our  dietary. 
The  following  chapters  will  endeavor  to  indicate  the 
best  ways  of  multiplying  our  pleasures  of  the  table. 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         207 

Before  beginning  with  France,  which  has  the  largest 
number  of  lessons  to  teach,  let  us  briefly  consider  the 
need  of  variety. 

King  Philip  V  of  Spain  engaged  Farinelli,  the  most 
famous  vocalist  of  his  time,  to  sing  four  songs  for  him, 
without  change  of  any  kind,  every  evening  for  ten 
years.  He  was  not  in  his  right  mind,  "as  a  matter  of 
course,"  one  feels  tempted  to  add,  and  yet  are  there  not 
at  this  day,  and  in  this  country,  many  thousands  of 
persons  whose  musical  pabulum  consists  entirely  of  half 
a  dozen  tunes,  which  they  sing,  hum,  and  whistle  dec- 
ade after  decade?  For  them  the  countless  inspirations 
of  genius  given  to  the  world  in  the  last  three  centuries 
do  not  exist  at  all.  And  how  much  enjoyment  they 
thus  miss! 

Vastly  more  surprising,  since  everybody  eats,  is  the 
fact  that  the  majority  of  persons  are  equally  ignorant 
of  the  countless  delicacies  invented  by  ingenious  cooks 
of  the  past  and  present.  What  Sir  Henry  Thompson 
wrote,  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  regarding 
the  average  Englishman  is  quite  as  true  to  this  day  of 
the  average  American:  "He  cares  more  for  quantity 
than  quality,  desires  little  variety,  and  regards  as  im- 
pertinent an  innovation  in  the  shape  of  a  new  aliment, 
expecting  the  same  food  at  the  same  hour  daily." 

Breeders  of  fine  animals  have  long  since  discovered 
that  nothing  is  so  conducive  to  health  and  other  de- 
sirable qualities  as  variety  in  the  food  given. 


2o8  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

A  monotonous  diet  soon  palls  on  the  appetite,  fails 
to  stimulate  the  digestive  organs,  and  the  result  is  dys- 
pepsia, loss  of  pleasure,  energy,  and  earning  power,  and 
the  shortening  of  life.  Think  of  the  pallid  victims  of 
the  everlasting  hog  and  hominy  in  the  South !  "Hasty 
pudding  and  milk,"  as  Artemus  Ward  sagely  observed, 
"are  a  harmless  diet  if  eaten  moderately,  but  if  you  eat 
it  incessantly  for  six  consecutive  weeks,  it  will  produce 
instant  death." 

At  a  conference  on  diet  in  schools  held  in  London,  all 
the  speakers  agreed  that  "monotony  is  the  most  fatal 
thing  to  digestion  in  both  young  and  old,  and  that  the 
knowledge  that  such  and  such  a  dish  must  inevitably 
come  on  Monday  and  such  and  such  another  on  Tues- 
day, is  destructive  beforehand  to  appetite  which  is  es- 
sential to  good  digestion  and  nutrition." 

When  the  average  American  or  Englishman  travels, 
he  is  glad  to  see  new  cities,  new  scenery,  new  costumes 
and  new  faces;  but  he  is  comically  indignant  if 
he  cannot  get  the  same  food  he  has  always  had  at 
home.  It  would  be  much  better  for  him  if  he  could  be 
made  to  understand  that  Cowper's  maxim,  "Variety  's 
the  very  spice  of  life,"  applies  to  diet  as  much  as  to  any- 
thing. Every  country  has  something  to  give  and  teach 
us  regarding  the  pleasures  of  the  table.  No  other  land 
yields  such  a  lavish  and  varied  supply  of  raw  material 
as  the  United  States,  and  all  we  need  in  order  to  be- 
come the  leading  gastronomic  nation  is  to  wake  up  to 


FUTURE    OF    COOKING         209 

the  importance  of  good  and  varied  cooking  and  rational 
eating,  and  to  learn  all  we  can  from  nations  famed  for 
their  culinary  art. 

The  methods  of  obtaining  the  diverse  national  food 
flavors  can  often  be  studied  without  traveling  abroad, 
since  in  our  cities  we  have  cooks  and  restaurants  of 
nearly  every  land  under  the  sun.  In  New  York  one 
can  make  a  gastronomic  trip  of  the  world. 


VII 


FRENCH  SUPREMACY 
\ 
GRUMBLER  might  ask  "What 's 

the  use  trying  to  learn  new  things 
from  foreigners  when  so  many  of  • 
our  families  can  hardly  afford  to 
buy  the  ordinary  meats  and  vege- 
tables for  any  kind  of  meal?" 
But  it  is  precisely  because  food- 
stuffs are  becoming  expensive  that  we  ought  to  look  to 
the  older  and  less  extravagant  nations  of  Europe  for 
guidance.  Our  Government  has  been  commendably 
alert  in  this  matter,  doing  a  most  useful  service  by  issu- 
ing Farmers'  Bulletin  391,  which,  as  previously  pointed 
out,  shows  how,  by  expert  cooking,  the  cheaper  cuts  of 
meat  may  be  made  to  yield  more  nutrition  as  well  as 

210 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY         211 

more  appetizing  flavor  than  the  choicest  cuts  as  at 
present  prepared  in  American  households. 

-  KITCHEN    ALCHEMY. 

\  It  is  to  France  chiefly  that  the  world  owes  this  in- 
valuable lesson,  which  gives  to  those  of  moderate  means 
many  of  the  advantages  of  the  well-to-do.  In  that 
country  the  humblest  peasant  family  enjoys  palatable 
meals  because  the  cook  is  an  alchemist  who  knows  how 
to  transmute  the  baser  metals  into  silver  and  gold. 

The  secret  of  this  alchemy  lies  in  the  use  of  the  stock- 
pot,  which  saves  for  the  table  a  vast  amount  of  animal 
and  vegetable  nutriment  and  flavor  such  as  in  American 
cities  and  on  American  farms  are  wickedly  wasted. 

It  is  no  consolation  to  know  that  the  British  are 
almost  if  not  quite  as  foolishly  wasteful  as  we  are. 
But  they  are  beginning  to  learn  of  the  French.  Sir 
Henry  Thompson's  "Food  and  Feeding"  sounded  a 
note  which  is  being  listened  to  more  and  more  atten- 
tively. A  more  recent  writer  comments  instructively 
on  "French  Thrift  and  British  Waste" : 

"In  a  French  household  such  a  thing  as  waste  is 
almost  unknown.  The  positive  waste  of  odds  and 
ends  in  this  country  is  simply  appalling.  Look  not 
only  under  the  vegetable  stalls  in  our  streets,  but  also 
in  almost  all  dustbins,  and  you  will  see  as  much  as,  if 
it  had  been  kept  clean,  might  have  given  health  literally 
to  thousands  of  people. 


212  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

"Besides  the  outside  leaves  of  cabbages  and  cauli- 
flowers, and  the  outside  layers  of  onion  skin,  there  are 
the  peelings  of  potatoes,  turnips,  carrots,  and  apples, 
and  the  tops  of  beet-roots  and  turnips,  and  the  large 
outside  sticks  of  celery.  In  France  and  other  countries 
these  go,  as  a  matter  of  course,  into  the  stock-pot.  In 
England  the  stock-pot  is  scarcely  used  at  all  among  the 
poorer  people.  It  is  not  too  much  to  affirm  that  half 
a  dozen  changes  in  the  ways  of  English  poor  people,  in- 
cluding first  and  foremost  the  use  of  the  stock-pot, 
would  increase  our  national  prosperity  more  than  our 
social  reformers  dream  of." 

SEVEN    HUNDRED    SOUPS. 

There  are  a  thousand  uses  in  an  intelligently  con- 
ducted kitchen  for  the  delicious  bouillon  in  the  stock- 
pot,  redolent  of  the  flavors  of  diverse  vegetables  and 
meats. 

Dumas  wrote  that  the  French  cuisine  owes  its  su- 
periority to  the  excellence  of  its  bouillon — the  product 
of  seven  hours  of  continuous  simmering.  He  knew 
what  he  was  talking  about,  for  he  was  almost  as  far 
famed  for  his  knowledge  of  kitchen  lore  as  for  his 
novels;  and  his  "Grand  Dictionnaire  de  Cuisine"  is 
one  of  the  monumental  contributions  to  the  arts  of  cook- 
ing and  eating. 

Another  Frenchman,  Ferdinand  Grandi,  wrote  a 
book  in  1902  entitled  "Les  700  Potages,  ou  I'art  de  Pre- 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        213 

parer  les  Soupes,  Consommes,  Bisques,  Purees,  Gar- 
bures,  Semoules,  Legumes,  Farineux,  Potages  de  toutes 
Sortes  et  de  tous  les  Pays." 

Seven  hundred  soups  seems  a  large  order,  yet  it  is 
possible  to  prepare  not  only  seven  hundred  but  seven 
times  seven  hundred  kinds  by  combining  the  juices  and 
flavors  of  diverse  meats  with  those  of  an  endless  variety 
of  vegetables.  That  this  is  not  an  exaggeration  any 
one  may  convince  himself  by  turning  over  the  pages  of 
Baumann's  "Meisterwerk  der  Speisen,"  which,  in  its 
2016  pages,  indicates  the  nature  of  about  that  num- 
ber of  soups. 

It  must  not  be  inferred  from  the  foregoing  remarks 
about  the  stockpot  that  nothing  goes  into  it  except 
odds  and  ends — peelings  and  tops  of  vegetables,  bruised 
bones,  trimmings  from  joints,  scraps  of  poultry  or 
other  meat  that  is  left  over  at  table.  On  the  contrary, 
those  who  can  afford  it  put  in  chunks  of  carefully 
chosen  meats  to  enrich  the  bouillon. 

For  making  the  national  French  soup  known  as  "pot- 
aU'feu  the  pieces  generally  selected  are  the  top  round, 
the  shoulder,  or  the  ends  of  ribs.  Preparing  the  pot- 
au-feu  is  not  so  simple  a  matter  as  it  may  seem.  In 
"L'Art  du  Bien  Manger"  we  read  that  the  boiling 
must  be  done  slowly  and  methodically  and  that  the 
vegetables  to  be  used  must  be  fresh : 

"To  make  an  excellent  bouillon,  cook,  preferably  in 
an  earthenware  casserole,  or,  if  that  is  not  available, 


214  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

an  iron  pot ;  put  in  the  meat,  the  bones,  cold  water  and 
salt.  Put  the  pot  on  the  fire,  bring  it  to  the  boiling 
point  and  skim  carefully,  then  after  this  first  skimming 
add  a  glass  of  cold  water.  Let  it  boil  up  again  and 
skim  a  second  time.  When  the  soup  begins  again  to 
boil  slightly  slacken  the  fire,  uncover  the  pot  partially 
and  let  it  simmer  gently. 

"After  three  hours'  simmering  add  the  vegetables 
and  two  pepper-corns.  Let  this  go  on  simmering  two 
hours  more.  Color  the  liquid  with  a  little  caramel 
made  from  burned  sugar.  Remove  all  the  fat  from 
the  bouillon,  put  it  through  a  fine  sieve  and  pour  it 
into  the  soup  tureen  in  which  you  have  placed  thin 
slices  of  bread  which  have  been  browned  in  the  oven. 
The  beef  from  the  stock  may  be  served  garnished  with 
the  boiled  vegetables.  (The  use  of  pepper  is  a  matter 
of  taste.) 

"The  economical  side  of  the  pot-au-feu  is  to  furnish 
soup  for  two  meals.  What  is  left  over  may  be  kept 
in  an  earthenware  jar  into  which  it  should  be  poured 
through  a  fine  sieve  after  it  has  settled  somewhat  in 
the  soup  kettle." 

Dumas,  who  relied  for  his  culinary  directions  on 
his  friend  Vuillemot,  of  the  Tete  Noire  at  St.  Cloud,  ad- 
vises that  only  the  freshest  and  juiciest  meat  should  be 
used  and  that  it  should  not  be  washed,  as  that  would 
rob  it  of  a  portion  of  its  juice.  The  bones  that  are 
added  should  be  broken  up  well  with  a  mallet  as  that 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         215 

will  result  in  the  gelatine  being  effectually  extracted 
from  them.  "Then  we  place  them  in  a  horsehair  bag 
with  any  scraps  of  fowl,  rabbit,  partridge,  or  roast 
pigeon  which  may  be  found  in  the  larder;  in  fact,  the 
remains  of  yesterday's  dinner." 

As  I  am  not  writing  a  cook  book,  my  main  object  in 
presenting  these  excerpts  is  to  provide  an  illustration  of 
that  use  of  brains  and  painstaking  care  in  the  kitchen 
which  explains  French  supremacy  in  matters  gastro- 
nomic. 

SAVORY    SAUCES. 

The  same  traits  are  abundantly  manifested  in  the 
making  of  sauces. 

While  Dumas  attributed  the  culinary  superiority  of 
the  French  to  their  bouillon,  George  H.  Ellwanger, 
who  has  written  an  entertaining  book  on  "The  Pleas- 
ures of  the  Table,"  declares  that  "the  supreme  tri- 
umph of  the  French  cuisine  consists  in  its  sauces." 

Many  of  the  French  gourmets  and  chefs  have  held 
the  same  view,  and  undoubtedly  more  inventive  skill 
has  been  shown,  and  more  reputations  have  been  made, 
in  the  realm  of  sauces  than  in  any  other  department  of 
the  art  of  cooking. 

Recipes  for  eighty-one  of  the  best  French  sauces  are 
given  in  "L'Art  du  Bien  Manger,"  and  two  hundred 
and  forty-six  sauces  are  described  in  Charles  Ran- 
hofer's  "The  Epicurean."    Perhaps  the  number  of  pos- 


2i6  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

sible  sauces  is  not  as  large  as  that  of  the  soups;  yet 
there  is  ample  scope  still  for  inventive  genius. 

Not  only  men  but  cities  have  been  made  famous  by 
a  sauce.  In  the  restaurants  of  Paris  and  all  over 
Europe,  in  fact,  Rouen  duck  is  often  on  the  bill  of 
fare.  But  as  Lieut.-Col.  Newnham-Davis  says  in 
"The  Gourmet's  Guide  to  Europe,"  "the  Rouen  duck 
is  not  any  particular  breed  of  duck,  though  the  good 
people  of  Rouen  will  probably  stone  you  if  you  assert 
this.  It  is  simply  a  roan  duck.  The  rich  sauce  which 
forms  part  of  the  dish  was,  however,  invented  at 
Rouen." 

It  was  with  a  duck  sauce  that  one  of  the  French 
restaurateurs  of  our  time  won  fame  and  fortune.  For 
a  number  of  years  every  American  and  Englishman  in 
Paris  who  could  afford  it,  went  to  the  Tour  d' Argent 
to  eat  a  duck  as  prepared  by  Frederic  Delair.  He  used 
two  ducks  for  each  order.  One  of  them,  well-cooked, 
was  for  the  meat,  while  the  other,  quite  rare  (or  under- 
done, as  the  English  say)  was  put  into  a  silver  turnscrew 
and  had  all  its  juices — including  that  of  the  liver — 
squeezed  out.  These  juices  make  a  sauce  which  I  have 
eaten  with  enjoyment  and  impunity;  but  I  have  been 
told  by  a  physician  at  Lyons  that  some  persons  are 
made  ill  by  it,  owing,  apparently,  to  some  injurious 
quality  in  raw  duck-livers. 

Most  of  the  Paris  restaurants,  now  that  Frederic  is 


The   "Tour   d'Argent"   and   Frederic   Delair 


2i8  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

no  more,  have  their  silver  turnscrew,  and  they  do  not 
feel  guilty  of  plagiarism,  for  Frederic  did  not  really 
originate  this  trick  but  adapted  it  from  the  practice  of 
French  peasants  who  tried  to  get  as  much  juice  as 
possible  out  of  their  tough  and  skinny  ducks  by  smash- 
ing the  carcasses  with  stones. 

Already  in  the  middle  ages  the  saucier^  or  sauce- 
maker,  was  the  headman  in  the  cuisine  of  French 
aristocrats. 

The  age  of  Careme  (who  wrote  eloquently  and  lov- 
ingly about  sauces)  was,  as  Ellwanger  remarks,  "the 
era  of  quintessences — of  the  cuisine  classique^  when 
chemistry  contributed  new  resources,  and  fish,  meats, 
and  fowls  were  distilled,  in  order  to  add  a  heightened 
flavor  to  the  sauces  and  viands  that  their  etherealized 
essences  were  to  accentuate.  One  thinks  of  Lucullus 
and  Apicius,  and  of  the  'exceeding  odoriferous  and 
aromatical  vapor'  of  the  ovens  of  the  artist  mentioned 
by  Montaigne." 

The  most  common  ingredients  used  to  make  the 
savory  and  appetizing  French  sauces  are  the  yolks  of 
eggs  (raw  or  cooked),  salt,  pepper,  mustard,  vinegar, 
lemon  juice,  tomatoes,  bouillon,  shallots,  anchovies, 
onions,  garlic,  carrots,  olive  oil,  orange  rind,  truffles, 
cream,  mushrooms,  pickles,  wines,  meat  extracts, 
cayenne,  and  diverse  aromatic  herbs.  But  the  most 
important   of    all    French   sauces    is   melted    French 


CAREME 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        219 

butter — not  "kitchen  butter,"  but  the  fresh,  fragrant 
product  of  the  creamery.  With  such  butter,  and 
aplenty  of  it^  gastronomic  miracles  can  be  performed. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  local  Flavor  in  French 
sauces.  Blindfold  a  Parisian  gourmet  who  knows  his 
country,  and  place  before  him  dishes  made  after  the 
fashions  of  different  provinces,  and  he  will  tell  you  at 
once  the  name  of  the  town  they  smack  of. 

The  coast  towns  enjoy  special  advantages  in  this 
respect,  as  they  can  use  diverse  shellfish  and  other 
marine  creatures  peculiar  to  their  region  to  impart 
special  overtones  of  flavor,  so  to  speak,  to  their  sauces. 

French  enthusiasm  over  sauces  reached  its  climax 
in  the  exclamation  that  with  sauce  Robert  a  man  might 
be  pardoned  for  eating  his  own  grandfather! 

Brillat-Savarin,  like  many  of  his  countrymen,  went 
too  far  when  he  declared  that  "poultry  is  for  cookery 
what  canvas  is  to  the  painter." 

No  doubt,  many  of  the  sauces  served  with  poultry  in 
French  restaurants  (each  of  which  has  its  specialty,  as 
it  has  in  the  line  of  fish  sauces)  are  delicious,  yet  good 
chickens,  ducks,  and  turkeys,  not  to  speak  of  game 
birds,  have  flavors  of  their  own  which  it  is  a  barbarism 
to  disguise  even  with  the  noblest  of  sauces — except 
once  in  a  while,  for  the  sake  of  variety.  The  way  to 
cook  any  winged  creature  if  you  want  the  most  de- 
licious flavor  it  can  yield,  is  roasting  a  la  broche. 


220  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

PROFITABLE   POULES  DE   BRESSE. 

Of  the  barbarism  just  referred  to,  many  Parisian 
restaurants,  I  regret  to  say,  are  habitually  guilty.  One 
evening,  at  one  of  the  best  of  them,  I  was  simply  dum- 
founded  when  a  choice  poularde,  which  cost  as  much 
as  the  almost  extinct  canvasback  duck  does  in  New 
York,  was  served  with — horribile  dictu — a  sauce  made 
of  American  canned  corn !  It  was  not  an  attempt  to 
cater  to  the  supposed  taste  of  a  New  Yorker,  for  it  was 
a  plat  du  joui\  prepared  before  we  arrived  and  served 
to  others.  Had  I  been  the  host  of  the  occasion  instead 
of  merely  a  guest  I  should  have  taken  the  headwaiter 
into  a  corner  and  whispered  some  advice  into  his  ear. 

What  aggravated  the  crime  was  that  it  was  a  poul- 
arde de  Bresse  that  was  thus  maltreated. 

Many  varieties  of  chickens  are  raised  in  France — 
the  poule  commune^  the  race  de  Houdan^  race  de  la 
Fleche^  race  de  Crevecoeur^  race  de  Barb'ezieux,  race 
Caussade^  etc.,  besides  imported  varieties;  but  the 
noblest  of  them  all  is  the  race  de  la  Bresse, 

The  poulet  de  Bresse  is  the  most  highly  esteemed  of 
all  domestic  birds  that  are  served  not  only  at  French 
dinners,  but  at  the  best  restaurants  and  hotels  all  over 
Europe.  It  has  a  richness  of  flavor  that  puts  it  far 
above  other  fowls — as  far  as  its  delicious  fragrance 
puts  the  Gravenstein  above  all  other  apples. 

In  France  the  poule  de  Bresse  has  long  been  held  in 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        221 

highest  esteem.  Brillat-Savarin  wrote  in  1825:  "as  to 
chickens,  the  finest  are  those  from  Bresse,  which  are  as 
round  as  an  apple."  English  breeders  have  recently 
discovered  its  superior  merits.  It  promises,  the  Lon- 
don "Telegraph"  remarks,  to  "become  very  popular  in 
the  near  future,  and  deservedly  so,  considering  the 
breed's  laying  and  table  properties,  which  have  been 
tested  for  fully  a  century  across  the  channel.  Bresse 
is  one  of  the  principal  towns  in  the  Aisne  district,  and 
the  breed  which  bears  its  name  was  always  cultivated 
for  its  white  flesh,  with  delicacy  of  flavor.  Poularde 
de  Bresse  usually  fetches  a  higher  price  than  any  other 
fowl  in  the  Paris  market."  "It  behoves  our  English 
poultry  keepers  to  use  every  effort  to  popularize  the 
Bresse  fowl  in  this  country.  The  specialist  club, 
started  some  three  years  since  [1909]  has  already  done 
much.  .  .  .  Mr.  G.  H.  Caple,  of  Stanton  Prior, 
near  Bristol,  is  honorary  secretary,  and  will  give  all 
needful  information." 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  Bresse  fowl  not  only  "puts 
on  flesh  in  a  wonderful  way,"  but  has  all  the  other 
qualities  most  desirable  in  a  farmyard  bird.  Several 
varieties  have  flesh  as  juicy  as  the  Bresse,  and  almost 
as  delicate  in  flavor,  but  there  is  always  some  trait  or 
other  that  puts  them  at  a  disadvantage.  The  Houdan, 
for  instance,  is  a  good  bird  for  the  table  and  a  fair 
layer,  but  it  requires  too  much  attention  to  be  generally 
profitable.     La  Fleche  provides  a  tender  morsel  but 


222  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

flourishes  only  in  dry  regions,  and  the  same  is  true  of 
the  Crevecoeur  class,  which  is  extremely  sensitive  to 
humidity.  The  Belgian  Campine  puts  on  good  flesh 
but  not  enough  of  it.  The  American  Wyandotte  and 
the  Leghorn  are  robust,  and  good  layers,  but  the  flesh 
is  inferior  in  flavor.  Much  better  in  this  respect  are 
the  Plymouth  Rocks,  but  they  are  poor  layers.  The 
Langshans  class  is  good  to  eat,  but  does  not  fatten 
easily,  while  the  Cochins  grow  too  slowly  and  their 
flesh  is  mediocre  as  to  flavor. 

The  poule  de  Bresse  has  none  of  these  flaws.  The 
black  variety  is  the  hardiest  of  all  chickens,  flourish- 
ing in  any  climate  except  the  extreme  north,  and  on 
any  soil,  dry  or  humid.  As  a  layer  she  is  among  the 
very  best,  often  winning  prizes  for  size  and  number 
of  eggs.  Though  prolific  she  is  not  too  eager  to  set, 
but  when  she  does  hatch,  she  makes  a  devoted  mother. 
Best  of  all,  the  flesh  is  tender  and  juicy,  there  is  plenty 
of  it,  and  in  flavor  it  is  beyond  compare. 

Truly,  the  poule  de  Bresse  is  the  chicken  for  the 
farm  and  the  market — "c'est  la  veritable  poule  de 
rapport,  celle  qui  convient  a  la  ferme,"  as  a  French 
noted  aviculteur  remarks.^ 

To  my  great  surprise,  in  looking  over  Farmers'  Bul- 

iLa  Poule.  Production  Intensive  des  Oeufs.  Par  A.  Linard,  Paris: 
S.  Bornemann.  See  also  the  same  author's  "La  Poule.  Production  In- 
tensive de  la  Chair";  and  "Les  Poules,  Poulets  et  Chapons."  Par 
Francois  Rontillet,  Paris:  Le  Bailly — for  information  as  to  the  best 
French  ways  of  feeding,  housing,  caponizing,  and  fattening  fowls. 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        223 

letin  No.  51  (1907)  entitled  "Standard  Varieties  of 
Chickens,"  I  found  no  mention  of  the  poule  de  Bresse  in 
this  forty-six-page  document,  which  begins  with  the 
statement  that  there  are  104  standard  and  a  large  num- 
ber of  nonstandard  varieties  of  chickens  raised  in  this 
country.  Can  we  afford  to  be  so  far  behind  the  French 
— and  the  English^ 

Ungastronomic  America  confronts  us  in  the  state- 
ment, in  Bulletin  51,  that  although  as  a  table  fowl  the 
Leghorn  is  only  "fairly  good,"  it  "holds  the  same  place 
among  poultry  that  the  Jersey  holds  among  cattle. 
The  question  of  profit  in  poultry  has  been  decided  in 
favor  of  the  egg-producing  breeds." 

In  a  country  in  which  most  poultry  is  spoiled  by 
being  put  into  cold  storage  undrawn,  it  is  no  wonder 
that  the  laying  capacity  of  a  fowl  should  alone  be 
deemed  worth  considering;  for,  under  these  conditions, 
as  previously  pointed  out,  breed  and  feed  are  of  no 
consequence  so  far  as  flavor  is  concerned.  But  the 
time  is  coming  when  the  American  consumer  will  im- 
peratively demand  Flavor  in  Food;  and  bountiful  har- 
vests will  be  reaped  by  farmers  who  look  ahead  now 
and  stock  their  poultry  yards  with  an  eye  to  good  and 
abundant  flesh  as  well  as  good  and  abundant  eggs. 
The  Bresse  race  will  fill  the  whole  bill.  It  is  best 
for  eggs,  best  for  the  table.  A  Bresse  hen  will  virtually 
hatch  two  chicks  from  one  egg. 


224  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

DIGESTIVE    VALUE    OF    SOUR    SALADS. 

Salad  goes  with  chicken  as  the  piano  goes  with  a 
song.  To  eat  lettuce  with  the  cheese,  as  many  Eng- 
lishmen and  not  a  few  Americans  do,  is  preposterously 
absurd.  As  for  putting  sugar  on  lettuce  I  cannot 
write  down  my  opinion,  for  it  is  not  fit  for  print. 
Salad  cries  for  vinegar,  as  a  parched  plant  cries  for 
rain. 

Vinegar  is  not  only  agreeable  to  the  senses  of  taste 
and  smell,  and  most  refreshing,  especially  in  summer, 
but  it  plays  a  very  important  role  in  the  digestion  of 
food. 

It  has  been  said  that  God  sent  us  our  food  and  the 
devil  our  cooks.  This  is  not  always  the  case,  but  the 
devil  certainly  inspired  the  man  who  taught  that,  in 
mixing  a  salad  dressing,  the  vinegar  should  be  added 
by  a  miser. 

This  maxim,  widely  accepted,  has  done  a  great  deal 
of  harm,  not  only  in  spoiling  many  millions  of  dishes 
for  the  palate,  but  in  preventing  salads  from  heading 
off  dyspepsia,  with  all  its  evil  consequences. 

Many  physicians  have  deplored  the  insufficiency  of 
fat  in  the  average  American's  diet.  Fat  is  especially 
important  as  a  source  of  energy,  and  also  because  fat 
meat  is  more  savory  and  appetizing  than  lean  meat. 
Furthermore,  physiologists  have  shown  by  laboratory 
experiments  that  the  presence  of  fat  in  meat  or  vegeta- 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        225 

ble  dishes  makes  them  yield  a  larger  degree  of  nutri- 
ment (apart  from  what  it  contributes  itself). 

'  Professor  John  C.  Olsen  of  the  Brooklyn  Polytechnic 
Institute  says  that  "fats  and  oils  furnish  fully  half 
the  energy  obtained  by  human  beings  from  their  food. 
Fats  also  exert  a  beneficial  influence  on  the  digestive 
process,  so  that  a  diet  without  fat  is  dry  and  unpalata- 
ble." 

The  only  drawback  is  that  fat  makes  the  food  "rich" 
and  difficult  of  digestion — unless  the  cook  is  an  artist. 

This  is  why  so  many  persons  exclude  it  from  their 
dietary,  at  the  cost  of  energy  in  men  and  the  beauty  of 
health  in  women. 

It  is  here  that  salad  comes  to  the  rescue.  The 
vinegar  in  it,  if  genuine,  excites  by  its  fragrance  and 
acidity  the  digestive  glands  not  only  in  the  mouth  and 
the  stomach,  but  in  the  pancreas,  which  acts  on  all  the 
constituents  of  food,  particularly  the  fats. 

The  pancreas  is  a  gland  near  the  stomach ;  it  secretes 
the  juice  known  as  pancreatic  and  pours  it  into  the 
duodenum,  or  small  intestine,  which — some  ten  or  fif- 
teen feet  in  length,  is  folded  about  it.  To  prevent 
intestinal  indigestion  there  must  be  an  abundant  flow 
of  pancreatic  juice,  and  this  flow  is  stimulated  by  the 
vinegar  in  the  salad  we  eat  and  other  acids  in  our  food. 

On  this  point  the  greatest  living  authority  on  the  sub- 
ject. Professor  Pawlow,  makes  the  following  extremely 
important  remarks: 


} 


226  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

.  an  acid  reaction  is  not  only  necessary  for 
an  efficient  action  of  the  peptic  ferment^  hut  is  at  the 
same  time  the  strongest  excitant  of  the  pancreatic 
gland.  It  is  even  conceivable  that  the  whole  diges- 
tion may  depend  upon  the  stimulating  properties  of 
acids^  since  the  pancreatic  juice  exerts  a  ferment  action 
upon  all  the  constituents  of  the  food.  In  this  way 
acids  may  either  assist  digestion  in  the  stomach  where 
too  little  gastric  juice  is  present^  or  bring  about  vicarious 
digestion  by  the  pancreas  where  it  is  wholly  absent. 
It  is  easy.,  therefore^  to  understand  why  the  Russian 
peasant  enjoys  his  kwas  with  bread.  The  enormous 
quantity  of  starch  which  he  consumes^  either  as  bread 
or  porridge^  demands  a  greater  activity  upon  the  part 
of  the  pancreatic  gland ^  and  this  is  directly  brought 
about  by  the  acid,  Further^  in  certain  affections  of  the 
stomachy  associated  with  loss  of  appetite^  we  make  use 
of  acids,  both  from  instinct  as  well  as  medical  direction, 
the  explanation  being  that  they  excite  an  increased 
activity  of  the  pancreatic  gland,  and  thus  supplement 
the  weak  action  of  the  stomach.  It  appears  to  me  that 
a  knowledge  of  the  special  relations  of  acids  to  the 
pancreas  ought  to  be  very  useful  in  medicine,  since  it 
brings  the  gland — a  digestive  organ  at  once  so  powerful 
and  so  difficult  of  access — under  the  control  of  the 
physician. 

It  is  obvious  from  these  disclosures  that  if  every 
American  family  followed  the  French  custom  of  eating 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        227 

a  sour  salad  at  least  once  a  day  there  would  be  very 
much  less  intestinal  indigestion,  which  is  even  more 
distressing  than  indigestion  in  the  stomach. 

It  is  further  obvious  that  Fletcherizing,  or  "mouth 
work,"  alone  does  not  avert  indigestion,  for  saliva  has 
no  effect  on  fats.  The  pancreas  takes  care  of  these, 
particularly  if  aided  by  acid  ingredients  in  our  food. 

Probably  no  detail  of  the  French  menu  is  therefore 
so  important  to  us  as  the  daily  sour  salad. 

An  astonishingly  small  number  of  American  families 
know  what  a  delicious  and  hygienically  valuable  dish 
salad  is  with  a  French  dressing  of  good  olive  oil  and 
pure^  fragrant  vinegar. 

There  is  very  little  nourishment  in  salad  leaves  until 
the  oil  has  been  added;  and  the  oil  is  what  we  need, 
with  the  vinegar  to  help  digest  it. 

The  two  words  I  have  just  italicized  explain  why  so 
many  Americans  imagine  they  do  not  like  salads  with 
vinegar  and  oil  dressing.  Unless  the  oil  is  good  and 
the  vinegar  pure  and  fragrant  such  a  salad  does  no  good 
but  may  do  much  harm;  and  it  is  seldom  that  one  can 
buy  good  oil  and  vinegar  in  a  grocery  store. 

Of  all  the  food  adulterators  none  are  more  rascally 
and  abundant  than  the  makers  of  artificial  vinegar. 
Pure  vinegars  made  of  cider,  wine,  or  malt  can  be  sold 
at  a  very  good  profit  to  the  manufacturer  and  dealer  at 
from  ten  to  twenty  cents  a  quart;  but  this  profit  does 
not  satisfy  the  swinish  greed  of  the  adulterators  and 


228  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

unscrupulous  grocers.  By  using  acetic  acid,  a  by- 
product of  the  distillation  of  deadly  wool-alcohol,  they 
can  make  "vinegar"  at  a  cost  of  two  cents  a  gallon,  or 
90  cents  a  barrel,  which  retails  at  over  $20.  '  * 

The  pure  food  law  covers  this  case,  but  the  fines  in- 
flicted are  so  trifling  compared  with  the  gains,  that  the 
adulterators  regard  them  in  the  light  of  a  joke  and  con- 
tinue their  profitable  poisoning,  though  many  of  them 
have  been  before  the  courts  two,  three,  or  four  times. 
Jail  is  what  their  crime  calls  for.  This  so-called  vin- 
egar is  in  most  cases  injurious  to  the  health  of  those  who 
consume  it,  and  by  its  lack  of  agreeable  fragrance  it 
discourages  the  healthful  practice  of  eating  sour  salads. 

It  is  foolish  to  get  vinegar  of  the  nearest  corner 
grocer  unless  you  know  he  is  honest.  It  is  best  to  buy 
it  in  the  sealed  bottles  of  firms  which  have  a  national 
or  international  reputation  for  fair  dealing. 

The  same  caution  should  be  observed  in  purchasing 
olive  oil.  Do  not  buy  it  of  a  grocer  who  exposes  his 
bottles  in  the  show  window.  If  he  does  not  know  that 
sunlight  spoils  the  best  olive  oil,  he  is  not  likely  to 
know,  or  care,  what  the  best  oil  is. 

Among  the  adulterants  used  to  cheapen  olive  oil 
small  quantities  of  castor  oil,  lard  oil,  fish  oil,  and  even 
petroleum  have  been  found.  More  frequent  are  rape- 
seed  and  poppy-seed  oil.  Peanut  oil  is  much  used,  but 
the  most  frequent  adulterant  is  cotton  seed  oil,  which 
costs  only  about  one-fifth  the  price  of  high-grade  olive 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         229 

oil  and  therefore  offers  great  temptation  to  the  dealer. 

Cottonseed  oil  is  not  inferior  in  nutritive  value  to 
olive  oil,  and  Dr.  Wiley  assures  us  that  no  objection 
*can  be  made  to  it  "from  any  hygienic  or  dietetic  point 
of  view."  Of  the  three  million  barrels  of  it  produced 
in  this  country  every  year,  not  less  than  two-thirds  are 
consumed  as  food.  It  is  "perfectly  satisfactory,"  the 
doctor  adds  "to  those  who  have  not  acquired  a  taste  for 
olive  oil." 

If  you  like  cottonseed  oil  there  is  no  reason  in  the 
world  why  you  should  not  pour  it  into  your  salad  bowl. 
But  if  you  wish  to  enjoy  the  epicurean  delights  of  true 
salads  you  must  train  your  sense  of  smell  and  learn 
to  distinguish  between  fragrant  oil  and  cottonseed 
oil,  which,  at  its  worst,  has  a  disagreeable  flavor  and 
at  its  best  is  practically  odorless  and  tasteless. 

It  is  the  fragrance,  the  Flavor,  of  olive  oil  that  keeps 
it  in  the  market,  boldly  defying  its  cheap  rivals. 

A  great  many  Americans  who  think  they  do  not  like 
olive  oil  know  not  what  real  olive  oil  is.  They  have 
been  fooled  by  the  adulterators.  They  may  have  been 
careful  to  buy  bottles  labeled  "Pure  Virgin  Olive  Oil" ; 
but,  as  Dr.  Wiley  says,  "this  expression  upon  the  label 
has  been  found  in  many  instances  of  olive  oil  highly 
adulterated  and  belonging  to  the  cheapest  grade." 

There  are  more  than  a  dozen  grades  of  olive  oil.  It 
varies  with  the  locality  it  is  grown  in,  the  care  taken  in 
its  manufacture,  the  season,  and  so  on.     The  first  press- 


230  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

ing  (virgin  oil)  is  the  best;  the  virgin  oil  of  the  month 
of  May  is  finer  than  any  other,  and  the  best  oil  comes 
from  Italy. 

It  is  worth  while  to  cultivate  a  "taste"  for  the  finer 
kinds,  for  they  are  the  most  fragrant  and  digestible. 
Such  oil  is  not  only  a  table  delicacy  second  to  none,  it 
is  also  used  more  and  more  by  doctors  for  diseases  of 
the  stomach  and  other  parts  of  the  digestive  tract. 
For  gall  stone  it  is  almost  a  specific. 

As  a  cosmetic,  nothing  equals  olive  oil.  The  beauty 
of  Spanish  and  Italian  women  is  owing  largely  to  their 
daily  and  liberal  use  of  it  in  salads  and  cooked  foods. 
It  improves  the  complexion  and  rounds  out  the  lines  of 
the  form. 

Eating  salad  is  by  far  the  most  agreeable  way  to  take 
olive  oil.  There  are  persons  with  whom  all  acids  dis- 
agree; these  unfortunates  have  to  do  without  the  fra- 
grant vinegar;  but  they  can  easily  learn  to  like  salads 
with  oil  and  salt  alonC.  The  taste  is  decidedly  worth 
acquiring. 

In  making  the  dressing,  oil  should  by  all  means  be 
applied  "by  a  spendthrift."  "Put  on  as  much  as  you 
think  you  can  afford,"  I  feel  tempted  to  advise;  but, 
of  course,  you  can  get  the  best  results  more  cheaply  by 
painting  each  leaf  with  oil  or  by  thoroughly  mixing  the 
leaves  with  it  before  putting  on  the  vinegar.  Always 
make  sure  that  there  is  no  water  in  the  bowl  and  that 
the  leaves  are  well  dried. 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        231 

In  hot  weather  the  vinegar  should  be  put  on  first, 
to  make  the  salad  more  piquant  and  refreshing.  One 
spoonful  of  vinegar  (pure  and  fragrant,  if  you  please) 
to  every  two  of  oil  is  not  too  much.  Let  the  stirring 
be  done  "by  a  maniac,"  according  to  the  old  maxim,  for 
it  is  most  important. 

Salt  is  a  necessary  ingredient,  and  a  trifle  of  cayenne 
makes  the  salad  more  digestible.  Black  pepper  is,  to 
some  epicures,  an  unwelcome  intruder,  though  it  is 
often  used  even  in  Paris  restaurants,  where  I  now  find 
it  necessary  to  add  sans  pozvre  in  ordering  a  salad. 
Once  in  a  while,  for  variety's  sake,  add  a  little  mustard, 
or  rub  the  inside  of  the  big  bowl  (it  must  be  big,  and 
Russian  lacquer  is  the  best)  with  garlic.  A  few  table- 
spoonfuls  of  meat  gravy--^articularly  chicken  gravy 
(from  roast  or  fricassee)  give  additional  richness  and 
savor  to  the  dressing. 

If  you  can  get  no  pure  and  fragrant  vinegar,  by  all 
means  use  lemon  juice  as  infinitely  better  than 
"vinegar"  made  of  acetic  acid  and  water.  But  if  malt, 
wine  or  cider  vinegar  is  at  hand  it  is  preferable  to  the 
lemon,  which  does  not  harmonize  so  well  with  oil. 
Lemon  is  too  loud — too  self-assertive — like  a  trombone 
added  to  a  string  quartet. 

It  is  a  subtle  thing,  this  gastronomic  instrumentation, 
and  there  are  differences  of  opinion  as  in  matters 
musical.  There  is  nothing  better  than  a  glass  of 
lemonade — except,  perhaps,   a  glass  of  limeade; — in 


232  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

very  warm  weather  it  is  a  luxury  to  suck  a  lemon  like 
an  orange.  But  if  a  slice  of  lemon  is  put  in  my  tea  I 
lose  the  delicate  aroma  of  the  leaves,  which  I  am  after; 
and  so  with  salads.  The  fragrance  of  vinegar  is  more 
delicate,  and  does  not  overpower  the  fragrance  of  the 
oil.  On  the  other  hand,  in  making  mayonnaise,  which 
is  also  a  French  dressing,  having  been  invented  by  the 
Marshal  de  Richelieu,  and  which  is  often  used  for 
green  salads  as  well  as  for  meat  and  fish  salads,  lemon 
is  perhaps  preferable  to  vinegar.  Apparently  the  ad- 
dition of  the  yolks  of  raw  eggs  to  the  other  ingredients 
prevents  the  lemon  tone  from  being  too  loud.  With 
sardines,  also,  a  lemon  is  all  right,  because  their  own 
flavor  is  not  so  weak  as  to  be  easily  routed. 

In  remote  regions,  where  pure  olive  oil  cannot  be 
obtained,  a  very  fair  substitute  for  French  salad  dress- 
ing may  be  provided  by  following  the  practice  of  Bel- 
gians and  Germans  of  putting  small  cubes  of  fried 
bacon  into  the  vinegar.  Sometimes  the  vinegar,  thus 
oiled,  is  heated  and  then  poured  over  the  leaves.  That 
wilts  them  but  makes  a  piquant  dish  for  a  change.  In 
one  way  or  another,  have  a  sour  salad  with  your  dinner, 
especially  if  it  includes  fat  food,  for  the  reasons  given. 

ESCAROLE,  TOMATOES,  ARTICHOKES,  ALLIGATOR  PEARS. 

In  nineteen  cases  out  of  twenty  the  salad  served  in 
our  country  is  lettuce,  and  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         233 

diner  is  insulted  with  huge  green  leaves  fit  only  for 
boiled  greens  or  the  stock-pot. 

Green  lettuce  is  good  to  eat  raw  only  in  its  infancy 
(when  two  or  three  inches  high)  or  when  it  has  shot  up 
higher  in  a  few  weeks  on  very  rich,  moist  soil.  Much 
better,  however,  is  head  lettuce,  with  the  white  inside 
leaves,  crisp  and  succulent.  Even  those,  unfortu- 
nately, are  somewhat  indigestible  to  many,  unless  very 
carefully  chewed. 

Those  who  find  lettuce  troublesome  should  by  all 
means  try  the  bleached  white  hearts  of  the  variety  of 
endive  known  as  escarole  (the  French  call  it  scarole). 

Until  a  few  years  ago  it  was  very  difficult  to  find 
escarole  in  any  American  market,  and  it  is  not  abun- 
dant now.  In  the  catalogues  of  seedsmen  who  give 
several  pages  to  the  different  varieties  of  lettuce,  esca- 
role is  disposed  of  in  four  or  five  lines  of  small  type. 
One  catalogue,  of  the  year  1912,  referred  to  it  as  "un- 
surpassed for  salads;"  the  others  made  no  comment  at 
all,  or  spoke  of  it  as  "good  for  soups  or  greens."  As 
there  has  been  practically  no  demand  for  escarole  seed, 
it  was  lucky  to  be  listed  at  all. 

Some  seedsmen,  however,  when  they  know  of  a  good 
thing,  try  to  create  a  demand  for  it.  Prominent 
among  those  is  W.  Atlee  Burpee,  of  Philadelphia.  To 
him  I  confided  my  sorrows  over  the  difficulty  of  getting 
good  escarole — or  often  any  escarole  at  all.     I  called 


234  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

attention  to  the  fact  that  it  is,  to  say  the  least,  equal  in 
flavor  to  the  best  head  lettuce,  and  much  easier  to  as- 
similate, one  member  of  my  household  being  able  to 
eat  it  by  the  bowlful,  whereas  lettuce  invariably  gives 
her  indigestion. 

It  is  much  easier  to  raise,  also,  than  lettuce,  which  is 
extremely  "cranky"  in  summer.  Even  in  cool  Maine 
lettuce  sometimes  is  wilted  by  a  single  hot  day,  unless 
cared  for  like  a  tender  hot-house  orchid;  whereas  esca- 
role  has  as  many  lives  as  a  cat.  I  have  often,  in  thin- 
ning out  my  plants,  thrown  them  away  by  the  dozen, 
to  be  roasted  by  the  sun ;  but  if  a  rain  came  along  in  a 
day  or  two,  they  revived,  took  root  unaided,  and  grew 
into  healthy  plants ! 

A  further  advantage  is  that,  in  rich  soil  and  with 
plenty  of  water,  a  single  plant  will  yield  two  or  three 
hearts  if  those  of  the  outside  leaves  which  are  not 
needed  for  bleaching  the  center  are  left  on;  whereas 
head  lettuce  is  never  of  the  "cut-and-come-again"  kind. 

The  only  trouble  with  escarole  is  that  it  has  not  been 
educated.  Lettuce  has  been  trained  by  dozens  of  ex- 
perts, the  result  being  a  large  number  of  excellent  varie- 
ties, some  with  heads  as  solid  as  cabbages.  My  ob- 
ject in  writing  to  Mr.  Burpee  was  to  persuade  him  to 
give  escarole  a  "college  education" —  to  Xeach  it  how  to 
head,  and  bleach  itself,  like  lettuce. 

He  promptly  replied  that  he  would  get  seeds  abroad 
of  all  the  different  varieties  and  experiment  v/ith  them 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        235 

in  his  Fordhook  trial  grounds;  also,  that  he  would  write 
to  Luther  Burbank  and  try  to  get  him  interested.  Un- 
fortunately Mr.  Burbank  was  too  busy  with  other  re- 
forms to  take  up  this  plant  too ;  but  Mr.  Burpee  forged 
ahead,  and  in  November,  1912,  he  sent  me  copies  of 
the  notes  on  the  varieties  of  escarole  he  had  sowed — 
seventeen  in  all.  "One  or  two  or  these,"  he  wrote, 
"seemed  to  be  much  better  than  the  Broad  Leaved 
Batavian,  but  none  of  them  are  really  self-folding." 
There  seems  to  be  hope  in  a  variety  numbered  5131  on 
his  schedule,  which  is  thus  described:  "Foliage  pale 
yellowish-green,  a  robust  strong  grower,  averaging 
twenty  inches  in  diameter,  leaves  eight  inches  long  by 
four  inches  in  breadth,  plain  leaved,  but  slightly 
curved,  inner  leaves  being  much  incurved^  giving  the 
impression  of  its  being  an  excellent  strain  for  bleach- 
ing." 

Along  those  lines  I  have  no  doubt  that  a  head- 
escarole  will  be  evolved  in  a  few  years,  and  that  the 
world  will  be  indebted  to  Mr.  Burpee  for  one  more  gas- 
tronomic delicacy  as  welcome  as  his  improved  head- 
lettuces,  his  limas,  his  stringless  pod  beans,  and  his 
improved  melons,  cucumbers,  squashes,  tomatoes,  cab- 
bages, and  other  vegetables.  Mr.  Burbank  wrote  to 
me  under  date  of  December  18,  1912:  "It  is  so  natu- 
ral for  escarole  to  spread  flat  on  the  ground,  that  it  will 
take  some  time  and  a  little  pains  to  make  it  form  a 
head."     Mr.  Burpee  will  take  the  time  and  the  pains. 


236  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

The  bitter  taste  of  escarole — a  mere  trace  where  the 
plant  is  well  grown — is  welcomed  by  epicures  and 
hardly  noticed  by  others. 

The  dressing  is  the  same  as  for  lettuce.  A  combina- 
tion that  cannot  be  too  highly  commended  is  tomatoes 
with  escarole.  This  mixture  is,  I  think,  my  favorite  of 
all  salads. 

So  far  as  tomatoes  are  concerned,  we  have  nothing 
to  learn  from  the  French.  As  it  is  an  American  plant 
— its  original  home  being  Peru — it  is  proper  that 
Americans  should  have  a  greater  number  of  varieties 
and  improvements  than  any  other  country. 

The  Germans  are  only  just  learning  to  like  tomatoes; 
the  English  have  made  more  progress  in  this  important 
branch  of  gastronomic  education;  the  French  revel  in 
the  tomato;  and  in  Italian  cookery  it  is  an  important  in- 
gredient; but  in  the  United  States  tomato-eating 
amounts  to  a  passion,  a  frenzy. 

In  New  York  every  corner  grocery,  even  in  the 
poorer  quarters,  has  its  constant  supply.  Apparently, 
all  classes,  rich  and  poor  alike,  are  bound  to  have  their 
tomatoes  daily,  be  their  price  five  cents  a  pound  or 
twenty-five  or  more.  For  this  astonishing  appetite 
there  must  be  good  reasons.  The  tomato,  with  its  del- 
icate acid  flavor  is  unquestionably  most  wholesome. 
Often  I  walk  a  mile  to  bring  home  the  best  speci- 
mens of  this  grand  appetizer  I  can  find;  and  in  my 
vegetable  garden  the  patch  most  carefully  enriched 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         237 

and  hoed  and  watered  is  that  where  the  tomato 
grows. 

To  get  it  at  its  best  you  must  pick  it  off  the  vine  and 
eat  it  on  the  spot,  without  any  condiment.  It  is  good 
in  a  score  of  ways — stewed,  grilled,  as  a  catsup,  even 
canned — but  for  table  use  it  is  most  desirable  in  the 
salad  bowl,  alone  or  in  combination  with  escarole  or 
lettuce. 

It  ought  to  be  needless  to  add  that  it  is  much  pleas- 
anter  to  eat,  and  more  digestible,  if  it  is  peeled  (which 
is  easily  done  after  soaking  it  a  moment  in  hot  water) 
before  slicing;  but  few  cooks  will  take  this  extra 
trouble,  slight  though  it  is,  unless  specially  requested. 

If  we  can  perhaps  give  even  the  French  points  on 
tomatoes,  they  have  much  to  teach  us  regarding  another 
vegetable  which  is  among  salads  what  diamond-back 
terrapin  and  canvasback  duck  are  among  meats — the 
globe  artichoke. 

Fortunately,  unlike  turtles  and  wild  ducks,  this 
noble  plant  is  yearly  becoming  more  abundant  in  our 
markets.  It  would  be  as  much  in  demand  as  tomatoes 
were  its  flavor  equally  known  and  the  samples  on  sale 
as  tempting  as  those  served  in  Paris  and  London.  It  is 
for  the  consumer  to  insist  on  having  the  best  varieties 
sent  from  abroad  and  cultivated  at  home;  but  the 
dealers  on  their  part  ought  to  be  alive  to  the  fact  that 
the  way  to  increase  sales  is  to  offer  the  best  at  the 
lowest  price. 


238  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

The  French  artichoke  makes  a  savory  vegetable, 
served  hot ;  but  how  any  one  can  eat  it — or  asparagus — 
hot,  when  he  might  have  it  cold  as  a  salad,  with  French 
dressing,  is  a  mystery  to  me.  Of  course,  it  must  be 
boiled,  except  when  very  young  and  tender. 

To  get  the  artichoke  at  its  best  one  must  ask  for  it 
in  a  first-class  Paris  restaurant.  The  waiter  brings  a 
huge  specimen  in  a  large  plate,  removes  the  inedible 
"choke"  in  the  center  with  a  movement  like  that  of  a 
dextrous  carver  (French  waiters  receive  prizes  for  skill 
in  carving),  and  there  it  lies  in  all  its  fragrant  magnifi- 
cence. 

Rossini  objected  to  the  turkey  as  being  a  bird  too 
large  for  one  and  not  large  enough  for  two.  Time  and 
again  in  Paris  I  have  had  placed  before  me  an  artichoke 
big  enough  for  two;  and  since  my  partner  prefers  the 
scales  and  I  the  fond^  we  were  both  happy  though  mar- 
ried. 

As  the  scaly  leaves  of  the  artichoke  must  be  dipped 
into  the  dressing  and  sucked,  it  is  not  for  persons  who 
object  to  using  their  fingers  except  to  hold  knife  and 
fork,  any  more  than  are  crawfish,  or  olives,  or  peaches. 

The  Moors  of  Morocco  prefer  to  use  their  hands  for 
conveying  food  to  the  mouth,  because,  as  they  sensibly 
maintain,  they  know  that  their  hands  have  been  thor- 
oughly cleaned,  whereas  knife  and  fork  may  have  been 
washed  carelessly. 

The  merits  of  the  French  artichoke  were  known  in 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         239 

New  Orleans  long  before  they  were  in  any  of  our  other 
cities.  In  various  forms  and  combinations,  it  helped 
to  give  distinction  to  the  famous  local  cuisine. 

The  Frenchman  who  first  ate  an  artichoke  was  as 
bold  as  the  man  who  ate  the  first  oyster,  for  the  plant 
looks  like  a  thistle  and  he  ran  the  risk  of  being  classed 
with  thistle-eating  quadrupeds.  Compared  with  the 
succulent  globe  of  to-day  it  must  have  been  thin,  dry, 
and  tough.  Yet,  even  now,  the  artichoke  is  capable  of 
much  further  improvement.  Burbank,  if  he  had  time, 
might  put  as  much  meat  into  the  base  of  each  scale  as 
there  is  now  in  the  bottom,  and  make  the  bottom  as  big 
as  a  full-sized  turnip. 

This  suggests  one  of  the  many  ways  in  which  the 
study  of  gastronomy  serves  as  a  guide  to  wealth.  A 
rich  harvest  is  sure  to  be  reaped  by  those  gardeners  who 
will  introduce  to  American  markets  the  best  French 
artichokes,  and  by  the  dealers  who  will  encourage  their 
purchase  by  asking  reasonable  prices  for  them. 
In  December,  1912,  I  asked  a  dealer  in  Washington 
Market,  New  York,  why  there  were  so  few  artichokes 
offered  for  sale.  "They  are  so  cheap — we  can't  get 
more  than  15  cents  apiece  for  them,"  he  replied. 
That's  the  American  way — at  present. 

For  years  importers  and  dealers  have  done  their  best 
to  discourage  the  growing  interest  in  another  delicious 
basis  for  salad — the  alligator-pear — by  charging  the 
most  outrageous  prices  for  it — usually  twenty  to  fifty 


240  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

cents  apiece,  though  it  can  be  bought  in  the  West 
Indies  for  a  penny  or  two  and  brought  to  New  York 
for  a  cent  a  pound.  Even  at  such  extortionate  prices 
the  demand  usually  exceeds  the  supply.  I  often  hunt 
for  some  all  over  town  and  usually  end  by  saying, 
"What  fools  these  dealers  be." 

The  alligator-pear — or  let  us  call  it  avocado,  please 
- — is  one  of  the  Creator's  masterpieces — what  we  would 
call  a  stroke  of  genius  had  a  mortal  originated  it.  But, 
like  other  works  of  genius,  it  is  not  appreciated  by  all — 
or  at  once.  An  American,  writing  from  the  West  In- 
dies, declared  that  there  the  avocado  is  "ever  present 
and  always  welcomed."  But,  he  proceeds,  it  is  "a  pit- 
fall and  a  snare,  and  many  a  green  foreigner  has  been 
taken  in  by  the  name  and  afterwards  by  the  pear  itself. 
Such  a  magnificent  specimen  of  this  luscious  fruit,  the 
'pear,'  as  the  one  seen  in  the  Jamaica  markets  causes  the 
hand  of  the  new  arrival  to  go  down  promptly  into  his 
pocket  for  a  penny  with  which  the  coveted  fruit  is  se- 
cured. Yum,  yum!  A  pear  weighing  three  or  four 
pounds!  What  a  feast!  The  knife  appears,  a  gen- 
erous slice  is  cut  out,  but  when  it  touches  the  palate! 
Yah !  It  is  a  flat,  flabby,  tasteless  vegetable  (although 
it  grows  on  a  tree),  but  sliced  and  eaten  with  salt  at  the 
table  it  forms  a  pleasant  relish." 

Had  this  man  eaten  it  with  French  dressing  he  would 
have  found  it  a  food  fit  for  gods.  The  avocado  was 
undoubtedly  created  to  serve  as  a  salad.     If  you  cut  it 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        241 

in  two,  lengthwise,  and  take  out  the  big  stone,  you  have 
two  halves  like  those  of  a  small  melon.  The  flesh,  firm 
though  soft  and  custardy,  has  a  most  exquisite  flavor 
— a  faint  flavor  which,  with  oil  and  vinegar  makes 
a  symphony  of  fragrance. 

Until  a  few  years  ago  I  myself,  misled  by  poor  speci- 
mens, groped  in  utter  darkness  as  to  the  enchantments 
of  the  avocado.  It  was  Hildegarde  Hawthorne  who, 
returning  from  Jamaica,  brought  us  some  choice  sam- 
ples. There  was  joy  in  the  mansion  thereat.  It  was 
like  the  discovery  of  a  new  song  by  Schubert  or  Grieg, 
or  a  new  painting  by  Titian. 

After  writing  the  above  remarks  I  came  across  a 
clipping  in  which  an  evident  epicure  objected  to  "dese- 
crating" the  avocado  pear  by  oil  or  mayonnaise  dressing 
when  served.  "Eat  it  with  a  spoon  slowly,"  he  ad- 
vises, "to  give  time  for  the  pleasure  it  imparts  to  perme- 
ate the  very  soul,  and  let  who  will  rail  at  fate.  There 
are  those  who  give  it  a  slight  sprinkling  of  salt,  others 
who  dust  it  over  with  a  little  white  pepper,  but  per- 
sonally I  would  as  soon  think  of  flavoring  my  currant 
jelly  with  garlic  or  my  chateau  Yquem  with  Trinidad 
rum." 

This  sounds  plausible,  and  I  admit  that  a  perfect 
avocado  is  better  without  than  with  vinegar  and  oil. 
An  imperfect  one  is  n't;  and  in  most  cases  we  have 
found  in  our  dining-room  that  the  avocado  is  rather  too 
rich  to  be  eatea  without  a  little  acid  dressing.     It  con- 


242  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

tains  seventeen  per  cent,  of  oil,  and  is  known  in  some 
regions  as  the  ''butter  fruit." 

To  return  to  France.  Next  to  the  artichoke  and 
the  escarole — which  is  the  better  of  the  two  I  don't 
know — the  most  desirable  thing  it  has  given  us  in  the 
way  of  salads  is  the  romaine — ^but  how  much  whiter, 
crisper  and  tenderer  it  is  in  Paris  than  what  is  offered 
for  sale  under  that  name  in  New  York ! 

Another  chance  to  coin  good  money,  messieurs  gar- 
deners! Americans  must  have  the  best,  and  if  you 
don't  supply  it,  a  rival  will. 

The  American  lobster  and  shrimp  salads  cannot  be 
beaten;  but  we  have  much  to  learn  of  the  French  and 
other  Europeans  as  to  the  endless  varieties  of  green, 
vegetable,  fish  and  meat  salads  by  way  of  multiplying 
the  pleasures  of  the  table,  and  banishing  intestinal  dys- 
pepsia, for  which  salads  are  more  remedial  than 
Fletcherizing. 

When  once  the  importance  of  this  subject  is  fully 
understood,  salads  will  become  the  principal  lunch 
dishes  in  American  homes  and  restaurants,  especially 
during  the  hot  months  when  to  be  "three  miles  from  a 
lemon" — or  something  else  that  is  refreshingly  sour — 
is  a  hygienic  tragedy. 

"Fruit  salads,"  when  not  sour,  make  desirable  des- 
serts. When  not  sour,  such  combinations  should  not 
be  called  salads.  As  a  rule  sour  fruit  mixtures  seem 
incongruous  to  a  trained  palate. 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        243 

In  these  days  of  Debussyan  influences  one  must  be 
prepared  for  all  sorts  of  anarchistic  combinations  of 
flavors.  Personally,  I  draw  the  line  at  the  compound 
of  Roquefort  cheese  and  sour  salad  now  placed  unblush- 
ingly  on  some  American  tables.  The  mixture  of  these 
two  delicacies  is  awful.  One  can  easily  see  how  the 
illegitimate  union  was  suggested  by  the  illogical 
custom  of  serving  cheese  with  salad,  dressed  or  un- 
dressed— the  usual  English  way. 

VEGETABLES    AS    A    SEPARATE    COURSE. 

The  mess  just  referred  to,  which  would  make  a 
Parisian  gourmet  shudder,  is  only  one  illustration  of 
the  Anglo-American  mistaken  policy  of  serving  to- 
gether foods  that  are  preferable  separately.  On  this 
point,  too,  France  has  an  important  lesson  to  teach  us, 
particularly  in  the  serving  of  vegetables. 

The  making  of  a  menu  requires  as  much  taste  and 
judgment  as  the  arranging  of  a  concert  program. 
Next  to  variety,  contrast  is  the  most  important  thing 
to  be  considered.  A  vegetable  served  separately  pro- 
vides some  of  this  needful  contrast. 

An  English  epicure  declares  that  the  secret  of  the 
excellence  in  French  cookery  lies  in  the  lavish  use  of 
vegetables.  "Where  we  use  one  kind,  French  cooks 
use  twenty." 

This  point  was  sufficiently  dwelt  on  in  the  para- 
graphs relating  to  the  making  of  savory  soups  and 


244  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

stews.  It  illustrates  Gallic  skill  in  culinary  orchestra- 
tion. But  the  French  know  that  at  a  dinner,  as  at  a 
concert,  a  solo  piece  is  desirable,  and  therefore  they  al- 
ways serve  one  choice  vegetable  as  a  separate  course. 

As  a  matter  of  course  the  vegetable  selected  for  this 
distinction — ^be  it  peas,  beans,  spinach,  cauliflower, 
asparagus,  artichoke,  carrots,  or  whatnot — ^must  be  par- 
ticularly fresh  and  succulent.  It  must  also,  like  the 
singer's  solo  number,  have  an  accompaniment,  that  is 
to  say  an  appropriate  sauce. 

No  French  cook  would  spoil  the  delicate  natural 
flavor  of  green  peas  with  mint,  as  the  English  do.  I 
once  asked  a  waiter  in  a  London  restaurant  why 
mint  was  put  with  the  peas.  He  promptly  replied: 
"Peas  'ave  no  flavor,  sir  I" 

In  France,  butter  (French  butter)  is  used  as  the  best 
accompaniment  to  a  solo  vegetable.  It  makes  the 
string  beans  and  whatever  else  it  goes  with  more 
savory,  without  obliterating  their  individual  flavor, 
as  the  mint  does  in  the  case  of  peas. 

PARIS    RESTAURANTS. 

The  French  have  reason  to  boast  that  the  gastro- 
nomic center  of  the  world  is  in  Paris,  within  a  circle 
intersected  by  a  line  drawn  from  the  Place  de  POpera 
to  the  Place  Vendome.  In  this  region  there  are  scores 
of  restaurants  of  the  first  rank  in  which  one  eats  the 
best  soups  and  stews,  the  best  veal,  the  best  poultry,  the 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         245 

best  salads  and  sauces,  the  best  vegetables,  the  best 
entrees,  the  best  bread  and  butter,  the  best  cheeses,  to 
be  found  anywhere  on  this  big  planet  of  ours.  Some 
persons,  for  sufficient  reasons,  prefer  English  roast 
meats  or  German,  Swiss,  or  Austrian  pastry,  but  in  the 
preparation  of  the  foods  just  named  French  supremacy 
is  unquestionable. 

It  takes  months — and  a  big  purse — to  get  an  ade- 
quate idea  of  the  good  things  offered  at  the  Paris 
restaurants.  Each  has  its  special  dishes  and  sauces, 
handed  down  in  some  cases  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion. Not  to  have  a  unique  sauce  for  sole,  or  a  monop- 
oly in  a  special  kind  of  soup,  would  subject  an  estab- 
lishment to  the  danger  of  being  classed  as  second-rate. 

Paris  is  full  of  professional  epicures — prominent 
among  them  are  authors  and  journalists — who  frequent 
certain  places  for  special  famous  dishes  and  who 
quickly  resent  any  deterioration  or  carelessness  on  the 
part  of  the  chef.  It  is  these  connoisseurs  who  are 
served  best;  they  are  willing  to  give  the  cook  time  to 
prepare  a  dish  scientifically,  and  they  take  time  to  eat 
it  hygienically,  that  is,  with  lingering  enjoyment  of  its 
appetizing  flavors. 

These  gourmets  appreciate  epicurean  subtleties  like 
that  practiced  by  the  late  Frederic  of  the  Tour 
d' Argent,  who  held  that  "different  kinds  of  fuel  should 
be  used  for  the  roasting  of  different  kinds  of  meat,  be- 
lieving that  the  spiced  scents  of  some  woods  trans- 


246 


FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 


mitted  in  the  cooking  add  to  the  pleasure  of  eating  all 
kinds  of  game" ; — a  notion  which  was  acted  on  by  the 
ancient  Romans  as  well  as  by  Japanese  gourmets,  and 
which  is  also  justified  by  the  fact  that  in  the  smoking 


Boeuf  a  la  Mode 

of  ham  and  bacon  it  makes  a  decided  difference  what 
kind  of  wood  is  burned. 

One  of  the  oldest  Parisian  restaurants  is  the  Boeuf  a 
la  Mode  which,  for  more  than  a  century,  has  owed  its 
vogue  in  part  to  its  special  way  of  preparing  and  serv- 
ing the  dish  after  which  it  is  named. 

A  specialty  of  these  restaurants  is  pancake.  In  our 
own  country  "French  pancake"  is  usually  a  thick, 
leathery  griddle  cake  rolled  round  a  spoonful  of  jelly 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        247 

and  served  tepid  on  a  tepid  plate.  In  Paris  the  head 
waiter  himself  attends  to  the  important  function  of 
putting  the  finishing  touches  on  the  cakes.  They  are 
brought  in  from  the  kitchen  thin,  crisp,  and  hot;  but 
that  is  not  enough.  The  waiter  has  before  him  a 
chafing  dish  into  which  he  puts  one  of  the  cakes,  with  a 
hard  sauce,  and  some  liqueur  which  is  set  on  fire.  He 
has  also  before  him  a  pile  of  hot  plates  for  each  of  the 
diners;  into  one  of  these  plates  each  cake  is  transferred 
when  ready  and  brought  to  you  by  another  waiter,  to 
be  eaten  red-hot.  It  is  worth  a  trip  across  the  Atlantic 
to  eat  those  pancakes. 

Mutton  on  the  best  Parisian  menus  is  not  siniply 
mutton.  It  is  mutton  of  a  particular  "vintage,"  and 
in  some  cases  the  name  of  the  breeder  of  the  sheep  is 
printed  on  the  bill  of  fare. 

Fruit  is  brought  to  the  table  in  large  baskets.  Cher- 
ries, and  particularly  the  fragrant  wild  strawberries, 
seem  doubly  appetizing  when  served  that  way.  A 
fragrant  French  melon  sometimes  perfumes  a  whole 
dining-room.  Those  who  have  to  count  their  francs, 
however,  had  better  inquire  as  to  prices  before  indulg- 
ing freely  in  fancy  fruits. 

Very  expensive,  though  worth  the  money,  are  the 
langoustes^  which  are  as  good  as  the  American  lobster. 
Better  still  are  the  ecrevisses^  or  crawfish,  which  are 
kept  on  sale  alive  in  the  great  market  place,  and  are 
therefore  always  good,  and  safe  to  eat. 


248  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

Some  restaurants  are  favored  for  their  lunches, 
others  for  their  dinners,  still  others  for  their 
late  suppers.  In  this  last  class,  it  is  needless  to  say, 
vulgar  extravagance  prevails.  Usually  there  is  the 
latest  kind  of  dancing,  or  music,  or  some  other  kind  of 
stupefying  noise,  and  gastronomy  takes  a  back  seat. 

Warm  weather  brings  into  favor  the  summer  restau- 
rants, in  which  usually  one  can  lunch  or  dine  in  the 
garden  or  under  a  tree.  That  the  breathing  of 
outdoor  air  while  eating  is  as  great  an  appetizer 
as  the  savory  food  itself,  is  one  of  the  many  lessons 
we  have  yet  to  learn  of  the  French  and  other  Euro- 
peans. 

How  did  the  restaurants  of  Paris  get  their  culinary 
supremacy? 

During  the  Revolution  many  of  the  nobles  were 
ruined,  and  their  chefs — among  them  Meot,  Robert, 
Roze,   Very,   Leda,   Legacque,    Beau vil Hers,   Naudet, 
Edon  became  caterers  to  gourmets  at  large.     "BeauvilC 
liers,  who  established  his  restaurant  about  1782,  was! 
for  fifteen  years  the  most  famous  restaurateur  of  Pari^ 
and  provided  liberally  such  delicate  and  sublimated 
dishes  as  those  which  had  hitherto  been  found  only  on 
the  tables  of  the  king,  of  the  nobles,  and  of  the  farm- 
ers-general.    The  great  restaurateurs  of  modern  Paris 
are  nearly  all  successors  of  one  or  the  other  of  the  fam- 
ous   cooks    above    mentioned,"    as    Theodore    Child 
pointed  out. 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY         249 

In  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale  in  Paris  I  came  across 
books  giving  curious  glimpses  of  the  restaurants  at 
earlier  periods.  In  1574  there  was  published  a  "Dis- 
cours  sur  les  causes  de  I'extreme  cherte  qui  est  au- 
jourd'hui  en  France  et  sur  les  moyens  d'y  remedier." 
The  author  complains  that  people  are  no  longer  satis- 
fied with  three  courses  but  must  have  meats  in  half- 
a-dozen  styles,  with  sauces,  haches^  pasticeries^  all  sorts 
of  salmigondis,  etc.  Every  one  he  says,  now  goes  to 
dine  at  Le  More,  Sanson,  Innocent,  or  Hanart,  "mais- 
tres  de  volupte  et  despense,  qui  en  une  chose  publique 
bien  policee  et  reglee  seraient  bannis  et  choissis  comme 
corrupteurs  des  moeurs." 

This  diatribe  against  the  providers  of  savory  food 
as  corruptors  of  public  morals  who,  if  the  police  tended 
to  its  duty,  would  be  chased  from  the  city,  seems  to 
indicate  that  Puritan  ideas  on  the  subject  of  the  enjoy- 
ment of  food  once  prevailed  even  in  France. 

As  late  as  1842  there  were  only  seventeen  restaurants 
in  Paris,  where  now  there  are  more  than  seventeen 
times  seventeen.  At  the  date  mentioned,  most  of  them 
were  near  the  Palais  Royal,  and  one  could  dine  for 
two  francs — forty  cents  I — while  lunch  was  only  a 
franc  and  a  quarter.  There  were  places  where  a  work- 
man could  get,  for  twenty  centimes  (four  cents),  bread, 
wine,  soup,  and  meat  enough  for  a  meal. 

In  Paris,  as  elsewhere,  prices  have  soared  since  that 
time,  but  correspondingly  cheap  eating  places  abound 


250  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

in  all  quarters.  The  lowest-priced  restaurants  likely 
to  be  patronized  by  tourists  and  resident  foreigners  are 
the  Duval,  and  other  "Bouillons,"  at  which  one  who 
knows  may  get  good  dishes.  Well-to-do  Parisians  and 
foreigners  may  often  be  seen  in  these  eating  places, 
and  one  of  them  actually  has  a  star  of  excellence  in 
Baedeker. 

At  one  of  these  establishments  I  had  one  of  the  best 
'petite  marmites  I  have  ever  eaten.  If  you  don't  know 
what  a  petite  marmite  is  I  am  sorry  for  you.  I  have 
dined  repeatedly  with  a  Frenchman  noted  both  as  art- 
ist and  epicure,  and  each  time  he  ordered  petite  mar- 
mite. If  you  ask  a  French  head  waiter's  advice  in 
London  or  Paris,  he  is  more  likely  than  not  to  suggest 
petite  marmite.  It  is  so  good,  and  the  making  of  it 
gives  such  a  deep  insight  into  French  methods  that  I 
will  quote  the  recipe  by  Escoffier  in  his  "Le  Guide  Culi- 
naire."     It  is  for  ten  people. 

Nutritious  elements:  2  lbs.  beef,  one  lb.  lean,  the  other 
well  mixed  with  fat,  as  the  end  of  a  rib.  i  marrowbone 
wrapped  in  cheese-cloth,  i  fowl — not  too  young  and  tender, 
giblets  from  four  fowls.  Liquid:  3  litres  (about  three 
quarts)  of  white  consomme — recipe  follows — ^the  seasoning  to 
be  added  just  before  serving. 

Aromatic  elements:  2-5  lb.  carrots  (200  grammes),  2-5  lb. 
nearly  ripe  turnips,  3-10  lb.  leeks  (150  grammes),  i  small 
celery  heart,  ^  tb.  cabbage,  blanched,  cooked  separately  with 
bouillon  and  drippings. 

''Observations.  The  'Petite  Marmite'  consomme  Is  served 
without  clarifying,  and  owes  its  merit  only  to  the  materials 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         251 

which  it  contains  and  the  extreme  care  brought  to  its  prepara- 
tion. It  must  be  served  slightly  fat.  Its  special  savor,  dif- 
ferent from  clarified  consomme,  must  recall  the  homely 
Pot-au-feu,  and  be  recognized  unmistakably  in  Croute  au  pot, 
Consomme  a  la  Bouchere,  and  others  of  which  it  is  the  base, 
the  only  difference  being  that  these  consommes  do  not  need 
absolutely  to  have  fowl  in  them,  whereas  it  is  rigorously 
obligatory  in  the  Petite  Marmite. 

"For  10  litres  of  white  consomme  7  kilos  of  beef  (between 
14  and  15  lbs.)  4  kilos  being  lean  meat,  the  other  3  soup  bone, 
21-5  lbs.  carrots  (5  or  6),  900  grammes  (nearly  2  lbs.)  turnips, 
I  lb.  leeks,  2-5  lb.  parsnips,  2  medium-sized  onions,  3  cloves, 
3  cloves  of  garlic,  3  pieces  celery,  14  litres  (14  quarts  approx- 
imately) cold  water,  70  grammes  brown  salt  (salt  that  has  not 
been  purified).     Cook  five  hours. 

''Observations:  Simple  consomme  is  habitually  cooked  5 
hours,  which  is  quite  sufficient  to  get  all  the  nutritious  elements 
from  the  beef.  On  the  other  hand  this  is  quite  insufficient 
for  the  bones  and  fails  to  extract  their  nutritive  principles. 
To  obtain  this  result  slow  cooking  from  12  to  15  hours  is 
necessary.  In  great  kitchens  it  has  become  the  habit  to  make 
a  first  consomme  with  the  bones  (crushed)  which  will  cook 
at  least  12  hours.  This  consomme  is  then  used  for  a  second 
cooking  of  the  meat  alone  which  takes  about  4  hours,  that  Is 
only  the  time  necessary  to  cook  the  meat.  This  second  opera- 
tion can  be  shortened  by  cutting  meat  and  vegetables  in  small 
pieces  and  clarifying  them  as  usual." 

As  the  American  practice  of  bluffing — of  charging 
a  high  price  for  a  poor  thing,  to  make  the  consumer 
think  it  must  be  good — is  not  a  Parisian  trait,  the  more 
expensive  the  restaurant,  the  better  the  food  is  likely 
to  be. 

Next  to  the  Bouillons,  in  the  culinary  hierarchy,  are 


252  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

the  Brasseries.  At  these,  one  can  get  well  prepared 
dishes  at  reasonable  prices,  which  are  always  marked 
on  the  bill  of  fare;  and,  as  the  name  indicates,  one  can 
take  a  glass  of  beer  or  a  bottle  of  mineral  water  instead 
of  the  expensive  wine  which  the  highest  class  restau- 
rants expect  every  one  to  order,  on  penalty  of  perhaps 
not  being  served  with  a  meal  prepared  in  the  chef's 
best  mood. 

These  leading  restaurants  are  at  present  in  the  throes 
of  a  serious  struggle  for  existence;  pessimists  go  so  far 
as  to  predict  the  extinction  of  the  whole  species  in  the 
not  very  distant  future.  The  Maison  Dore  and  the 
Cafe  Riche  had  to  make  way  some  years  ago  for  busi- 
ness houses  that  could  better  afford  to  pay  the  soaring 
rents,  and  in  1912  the  Durand  was  transformed  into 
a  tailoring  establishment.  Of  the  old  classical  res- 
taurants the  Tour  d' Argent,  Laperouse,  Paillard,  Boeuf 
a  la  Mode,  Voisin,  hold  their  own,  yet  I  have  dined  in 
them  on  evenings  when  they  were  anything  but 
crowded. 

Doubtless  the  custom  of  some  of  these  places  of  not 
affixing  prices  to  the  viands  offered  on  the  bill  of  fare 
has  had  something  to  do  with  bringing  about  this 
result.  Even  a  well-to-do  diner  does  not  always  care 
to  be  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  the  head  waiter  in  the 
making-up  of  his  bill.  But  it  is  the  multiplying  of 
the  brasseries  that  is  chiefly  responsible  for  the  decline 
of  the  high-priced  restaurants,  and  another  dangerous 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        253 

rival  that  has  helped  to  bring  it  about  is  the  palatial, 
up-to-date  hotel.  Some  of  these  hotels  employ  as 
good  chefs  as  the  leading  restaurants  and  offer  as 
abundant  opportunities  for  sumptuous  and  savory 
repasts,  at  prices  tall  enough  to  please  the  most  reck- 
less visitor  from  New  York  or  Buenos  Ayres. 

Gourmets  will  doubtless  continue  to  frequent  the 
classical  restaurants  as  long  as  they  maintain  their 
high  standard.  It  would  be  a  historic  as  well  as  a 
gastronomic  calamity  to  have  them  disappear.  If 
necessary  the  Government  should  give  them  a  sub- 
vention as  it  does  to  the  Opera  and  the  Theatre  Fran- 
gais;  for  these  epicurean  establishments  have  done  quite 
as  much  as  the  theaters  to  make  France  famous  among 
the  civilized  nations  of  the  world. 

It  is  owing  to  them  that  French  long  ago  became  the 
culinary  world-language.  Go  wherever  you  please, 
from  Paris  to  Berlin,  to  Lucerne,  Milan,  Vienna,  Con- 
stantinople, Tokio;  or,  in  the  other  direction,  to  Lon- 
don, New  York,  Chicago,  San  Francisco,  Melbourne, 
— everywhere,  at  the  leading  restaurants,  you  will  find 
the  menu  printed  in  French,  and,  in  case  of  a  course 
dinner,  the  viands  offered  in  the  order  prescribed  by 
French  gourmets. 

In  Germany,  after  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  chau- 
vinistic attempts  were  made  to  banish  French  words 
from  the  bill  of  fare.  These  attempts  were,  as  Her- 
mann Dunger  frankly  admits  in  his  Verdeutschungs- 


254  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

worterbuch  (1882),  a  failure;  in  some  cases  the  comic 
consequence  was  that  Germans  who  recognized  a  dish 
under  its  French  name  had  n't  the  remotest  idea  what 
it  was  when  translated  into  their  own  language.  Like 
the  Italian  forte,  piano,  adagio,  diminuendo,  and  other 
musical  expression  marks,  French  gastronomic  words 
have  become  parts  of  a  spontaneous  Esperanto — a 
world-language,  which  has  come  to  stay;  a  perpetual 
reminder  of  the  most  important  contribution  made  by 
the  great  French  nation  to  modern  civilization — the 
gradual  substitution,  everywhere,  and  particularly  in 
Germany  and  England,  of  refined  methods  of  prepar- 
ing food  in  place  of  the  barbarous  mediaeval  ones 
prevalent  until  two  centuries  ago. 

We  get  an  interesting  glimpse  of  French  gastro- 
nomic leadership  by  glancing  at  the  words  successively 
adopted  by  the  Germans.  In  1715,  when  the  "Frauen- 
zimmerlexicon"  of  Amaranthes  appeared,  the  follow- 
ing French  words  had  already  gained  currency,  among 
them:  bouillon,  carbonade,  champignon,  cotelette, 
coulis,  creme,  a  la  daube,  entremets,  farce,  fricadelle 
fricandeau,  fricasse,  gelee,  hachis,  marinieren,  omelette, 
pikant,  potage,  ragout,  saucisse;  and  for  most  of  these 
there  was  no  exact  equivalent  in  German. 

During  the  time  of  Louis  XV  Germany  further  im- 
ported the  following:  dejeuner,  diner,  souper,  dessert, 
entree,  fumet,  haut-gout,  poularde,  sauciere,  sorbet, 
table  d'hote,  bonbon,  champagne,  limonade,  liqueur. 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        255 

To  a  later  period  belong  baiser,  boeuf  a  la  mode, 
consomme,  filet,  hors  d'oeuvre,  konserve,  roulade. 
These  as  well  as  the  words  gastronome  and  gourmand 
were  imported  during  the  early  decades  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  To  the  second  half  of  the  century 
belong  croquette,  entrecote,  flan,  remoulade,  meringue, 
puree,  vol-au-vent.  The  word  menu  was  not  adopted 
in  Germany  till  after  1850. 

RUSSIAN  AND  AMERICAN   INFLUENCES. 

In  Paris  as  in  New  York  one  can  make  a  gastro- 
nomic tour  of  the  world.  While  the  French,  in  return 
for  all  the  culinary  terms  they  have  lent  their  neighbors 
seem  to  have  adopted  only  one  Teutonic  word  ("Bock," 
for  beer),  they  amiably  tolerate  the  presence  within 
their  walls  of  German  and  Austrian  restaurants,  some 
of  which  are  excellent,  though  thoroughly  exotic  from 
the  French  point  of  view.  In  one  of  them  the  host 
is  so  much  of  an  epicure  himself  that  in  his  delight 
with  the  Viennese  menu  he  sketches  for  you,  he  will 
blow  a  kiss  at  the  enjoyments  it  calls  up  in  his  imagina- 
tion. 

Most  Germans  and  Austrians,  however,  are  glad  to 
frequent  the  French  restaurants  while  in  Paris,  and 
the  same,  as  Col.  Newnham-Davis  informs  us,  is  true 
of  the  English  visitor,  though  if  he  desires  a  chop  or 
a  steak,  he  can  have  one  made  to  order  in  one  of  the 
many  grill  rooms  in  foreign  style  that  have  come  into 


256  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

existence,  and  in  one  of  which  the  joints  of  beef  and 
mutton  are  wheeled  to  the  tables  and  carved  there  to 
order,  as  in  some  London  eatmg  houses.  The  Italians 
are  more  apt  to  cling  to  their  own  style  of  cookery,  and 
they  have  plenty  of  places  adorned  with  Chianti  bottles 
where  they  can  have  their  spaghetti,  their  risotto,  their 
fritto  misto,  and  their  other  excellent  fries.  The 
Spanish  also  have  places  where  they  can  indulge  their 
appetite  for  home  dishes;  and  so  have  many  other  na- 
tions, including  Greeks,  as  well  as  the  Turks  and  othei 
Orientals. 

Of  all  the  foreigners  only  two,  the  Russians  and  the 
Americans,  have  had  a  definite  influence  on  the  French 
cuisine  and  menu — and  not  to  their  advantage,  it  must 
be  confessed. 

From  the  Russians  the  Paris  restaurateurs  bor- 
rowed the  custom  of  beginning  a  meal  with  hors 
d'oeuvres,  or  appetizers.  I  remember  the  time  when 
the  hors  d'oeuvres  in  France  simply  meant  radishes, 
butter,  and  a  few  thin  slices  of  sausage  which  were 
placed  on  the  table  at  once  and  against  indulging  in 
which  the  guide  books  warned  tourists  unless  they 
were  prepared  to  face  a  substantial  addition  to  their 
bill.  To-day,  the  price  of  the  appetizers  is  usually 
noted  on  the  bill  of  fare,  and  it  is  not  at  all  high,  even 
at  the  aristocratic  restaurants.  Cold  smoked  salmon, 
tunny  fish,  sardines,  baby  artichokes  in  oil,  various 
vegetable,  fish,  and  lobster  salads,  cold  eggs,  sliced 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        257 

sausages,  and  sundry  odier  delicacies  are  offered,  with 
bread  and  butter. 

These  things  undoubtedly  are  good,  and  they  are 
appetizers ;  but  they  are  also  appetite  destroyers — quite 
too  substantial  to  preface  an  elaborate  dinner.  In 
Russia  and  Scandinavia,  where  the  extreme  cold  creates 
a  ravenous  appetite  and  a  great  capacity  for  stowing 
away  things,  they  may  be  all  right;  but  in  temperate 
climes,  and  for  dwellers  in  cities  who  get  little  exer- 
cise, they  are  too  heavy.  When  I  see  one  of  these 
displays  of  cold  dishes  I  always  think  what  a  tempting 
lunch  they  would  make  all  by  themselves;  but  if  I 
eat  them  before  dinner  I  certainly  cannot  enjoy  what 
follows  as  much  as  I  would  without  them;  and  that, 
I  believe,  is  the  experience  of  most  diners  who  are 
not  neighbors  of  the  Eskimos. 

It  is  different  with  caviare  and  oysters.  These  are 
merely  appetizers,  containing  little  nourishment;  but 
caviare  is  not  for  everybody,  and  as  for  oysters,  since 
they  must  be  served  ice-cold,  it  is  unwise  to  chill  the 
stomach  by  beginning  with  them.  Let  them  follow 
the  soup,  which  is,  because  of  its  warmth  and  its  stimu- 
lating effect  on  the  digestive  glands,  the  best  thing 
to  begin  a  meal  with.  Muskmelons  and  grapefruit 
may  be  allowed  to  precede  it  if  served  without  ict^, 
which  certainly  impairs  their  flavor. 

While  adopting  the  Russian  hors  d'ceuvre  habit,  the 
Parisians  have  had  too  much  taste  and  moderation  to 


258  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

indulge  in  its  Gargantuan  extremes.  The  perform- 
ances of  Russians  and  Swedes  border  on  the  miracu- 
lous. 

If  Russians  in  Paris  cannot  everywhere  indulge  in 
the  riotous  profusion  of  hors  d'ceuvre  they  have  at 
home,  they  can  do  so  at  La  Rue's,  which  has  a  full  line 
of  them  and  also  of  diverse  other  "mets  Russes  na- 
tionaux." 

Americans  who  wish  to  eat  ham  and  eggs,  or  hash, 
or  corn  muffins,  griddle  cakes,  breakfast  cereals  and 
that  sort  of  thing,  may  find  them  in  hotels  aud  in  not 
a  few  of  the  restaurants.  American  lobsters,  at  Eiffel 
Tower  prices,  are  on  every  menu,  and  there  are  places 
where  oysters  from  across  the  Atlantic,  as  well  as  na- 
tive, can  be  ordered  raw,  scalloped,  fried,  broiled,  or 
in  diverse  stews,  tout  comme  chez  nous.  The  numer- 
ous grill  rooms  are  also  accommodating,  though  they 
do  not  open  early  enough  to  offer  an  American  break- 
fast, while  the  hotels  seldom  venture  on  anything  be- 
yond bacon  and  eggs  before  lunch  time. 

It  would  be  well  if  the  Parisians  ate  an  American 
breakfast  and  followed  it  up  with  a  lighter  lunch;  but 
it  would  require  another  revolution  to  bring  about  such 
a  reform. 

Paris  has  become  considerably  Americanized.  One 
can  hardly  wonder  at  having  our  cotton  seed  oil  served 
instead  of  the  noble  juice  of  the  olive  at  the  cheap 
restaurants;  but  when  I  found  that  it  was  used  un- 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        259 

blushingly  at  some  of  the  more  expensive  places  I  was 
shocked  at  this  sign  of  decadence — or  effrontery — and 
visions  of  cold  storage  poultry,  salted  butter,  and 
doughy  bread  with  inedible  crust — but  no!  such 
things  no  one  would  ever  dare  to  place  before  Pari- 
sians ! 

The  fact  that  their  own  olive  oil  is  not  as  a  rule 
equal  to  the  best  Italian  may  have  made  them  for  the 
moment  tolerant  of  the  American  invader.  The 
health  authorities  speak  of  diverse  other  substitutions 
and  adulterants  as  being  in  use;  but  these  are  not 
necessarily  American,  though  we  lead  the  world  in  our 
tolerance  of  them. 

What  the  Parisians  chiefly  complain  about  in  refer- 
ence to  American  influence  is  that  it  has  introduced 
our  national  vice  of  hurry  into  the  kitchen  and  the 
dining-room.  When  so  many  of  the  wealthiest  pa- 
trons of  the  restaurants  expect  to  get  dishes  served  at 
a  moment's  notice,  to  be  gulped  down  and  hastily  fol- 
lowed by  others,  the  very  strongholds  of  gastronomic 
France — slow  cooking  and  leisurely  eating — are 
assailed. 

The  chief  danger  to  the  French  cuisine  lies  in  the 
fact  that,  as  Mr.  Paderewski  put  it  in  a  talk  I  had 
with  him  on  this  subject,  "it  is  so  much  easier  to  pre- 
pare a  meal  the  American  way." 

South  Americans,  though  they  have  little  to  boast  of 
at  home  in  the  way  of  pleasures  of  the  table,  adapt 


26o  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

themselves  more  easily  to  French  ways,  and  as  they 
are  rapidly  increasing  in  numbers  in  Paris  and  spend 
even  more  money  than  the  North  Americans,  their 
influence  will  perhaps  counteract  that  of  the  impatient 
visitors  from  the  United  States,  who  usually  know  so 
much  more  about  making  dollars  than  about  spending 
them  rationally. 

Every  American  has  attended  banquets  at  which 
there  was  more  to  feast  the  eyes  than  the  palate.  In 
the  Figaro  Marcel  Prevost  complained  (1910)  that 
this  sort  of  thing  was  gaining  in  Paris.  "Mangeront* 
ils^"  he  asked — will  Parisians  of  the  future  eat? 
Judging  by  the  present  tendency,  they  will  not,  he 
answers — they  will  feed.  They  will  take  nourish- 
ment, but  gastronomy,  the  art  of  dining  with  intelli- 
gence and  pleasure,  will  have  ceased  to  exist.  In  the 
house  the  cause  of  this  change  is  what  Prevost  calls  the 
"progres  de  la  coquetterie  feminine."  Women,  to  be 
sure,  were  never  the  greatest  of  the  culinary  artists,  but 
they  used  to  pay  some  attention  to  food  and  its  prepara- 
tion, whereas  at  present  their  chief  thought  is  of  the 
appearance  of  the  dining-room  and  the  table.  The 
linen,  the  porcelain,  the  glassware,  must  be  of  the 
finest,  the  flowers  of  the  costliest,  but  the  food  and 
wine  are  provided  by  a  paid  caterer,  who  seldom  knows 
his  business.  As  for  eating  in  restaurants  or  hotels, 
that  is  no  better.  The  famous  "maisons"  have  disap- 
peared, to  be  replaced  by  huge  palaces,  in  which  every- 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        261 

thing  is  showy  and  sumptuous  but  the  food  every- 
where the  same,  without  distinction  or  individuality. 
What  is  worse,  the  younger  generation  does  not  seem 
to  regret  this.  French  youth  even  drink  American 
cocktails  and  are  not  ashamed! 

While  there  is  no  doubt  some  truth  in  these  allega- 
tions they  are  absurdly  exaggerated.  Complaints  as 
to  the  decadence  of  French  cookery  have  been  made  at 
regular  intervals — like  the  complaints  about  the  dis- 
appearance of  great  singers.  I  once  amused  myself 
by  writing  an  article  covering  three  centuries,  in  which 
I  quoted  the  laments  of  each  generation  over  the  de- 
cline of  the  art  of  song  as  compared  with  the  brilliant 
achievements  of  the  preceding  generation  of  singers. 
Were  it  worth  while  I  might  compile  equally  amusing 
evidence  on  the  subject  of  the  French  cuisine.  Thack- 
eray complained  of  a  similarity  of  dinners.  Charles 
Monselet  in  1879,  looked  "in  vain  for  the  tables  that 
are  praised  or  the  hosts  that  are  renowned."  In  1866 
Nestor  Roqueplan  complained  that  the  French  "no 
longer  find  places  devoted  to  the  Flemish  kitchen, 
others  to  the  Normandy,  Lyonnaise,  Toulousian,  Bor- 
delaise,  or  Provengal  kitchens."  But  he  had  the  good 
sense  to  add  that  "France  nevertheless  is  still  the  coun- 
try where  eating  is  found  at  its  best." 

So  it  is  at  the  present  day,  and  is  likely  to  be  for 
years  to  come.  No  matter  how  many  of  the  best  chefs 
are  taken  away  by  American  millionaires  or  Russian 


262  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

Grand  Dukes,  Paris  remains  the  world's  high  school 
of  culinary  art. 

PROVINCIAL    LOCAL    FLAVORS. 

While  there  may  be  fewer  opportunities  than  there 
were  formerly  to  get  special  Lyonnaise,  Toulousian,  or 
Bordelaise  dishes  in  Paris,  the  Provinces  themselves 
offer  abundant  opportunity  to  study  and  enjoy  the  in- 
finite variety  of  French  cookery.  How  large  a  field  is 
open  to  the  student  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that 
Col.  Newnham-Davis  devotes  no  fewer  than  seventy 
pages  of  his  "Gourmet's  Guide  to  Europe"  to  a  study 
of  the  inns,  hotels,  and  restaurants  of  Provincial 
France.  He  found  that  "almost  every  town  of  any 
importance  has  some  special  dish  or  some  special  pate 
of  its  own;  there  are  hundreds  of  good  old  inns  where 
the  cuisine  is  that  of  their  province,  and  there  are  great 
tracts  of  country  which  ought  to  be  marked  by  some 
special  color  on  all  guide-book  maps,  where  the  cook- 
ery is  universally  good." 

This  noted  English  epicure  advises  gourmets  who 
have  time  to  journey  leisurely  and  especially  those  who 
have  an  automobile  at  command,  to  make  a  journey  of 
gastronomic  exploration  in  the  district  between  Mont- 
pellier  and  Toulouse,  which  is  "a  cradle  of  good 
cooks"  and  where  some  of  the  traditions  of  cookery  of 
the  old  Romans  still  linger.  The  land  of  the  Meuse, 
the  Moselle,  and  the  Saone  is  another  and  more  north- 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        263 

erly  paradise  of  good  cooking.     ''In  Dordogne  there  is 
not  a  peasant  who  cannot  get  a  traveler  en  panne  a 


Coming  to  market,  Brittany 

truffled  omelette  which  would  make  an  alderman's 
mouth  water  .  .  .  and  all  the  Midi  from  the 
Alps  to  the  Pyrenees  is  a  happy  hunting  ground  for  the 
gastronome." 


264  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

My  own  experience  in  these  regions  is  much  more 
limited,  but  wherever  I  followed  this  epicure's  advice 
I  found  him  a  reliable  guide.  In  most  parts  of  France, 
however,  a  guide  to  good  cheer  is  hardly  needed,  for 
you  can  stop  at  almost  any  inn  with  the  assurance  of 
getting  a  savory  lunch,  dinner,  or  supper.  In  Proven- 
cal inns  garlic  is  no  doubt  used  too  freely,  but  no 
harm  can  come  to  those  who  cannot  stomach  it,  since  its 
warning  appeals  as  distinctly  to  the  nose  as  the  rattle- 
snake's does  to  the  ear. 

The  Pyrenees  are  famed  for  trout  and  chicken. 
The  chicken  we  found  excellent,  the  trout  less  so.  An 
innkeeper  with  whom  I  discussed  the  matter  admitted 
frankly  that  they  left  something  to  be  desired  in  the 
matter  of  flavor.  A  Parisian  epicure  to  whom  I  had 
mentioned  trout  one  day,  shook  his  head  and  sug- 
gested sole  or  turbot  instead. 

Sole  is  at  its  best  at  Dieppe.  In  that  town  there 
is  a  restaurant,  formerly  frequented  by  Whistler, 
where  the  waiter,  to  please  fastidious  guests,  proudly 
serves  soles  caught  with  his  own  hands  in  the  early 
morning  hours. 

Cannes  has  a  hotel  the  guests  of  which  can 
go  to  a  tank  and  with  a  net  catch  the  particular 
fishes  they  want  to  eat  half  an  hour  later.  At  Aix- 
les-Bains  there  is  a  caterer  who  "will  not  have  any 
salt-water  fish  in  his  larder,  for  Aix  in  summer  is  so  hot 
that  sea  fish  do  not  always  come  to  table  quite  fresh, 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        265 

and  this  risk  he  will  not  run,  in  the  interest  of  his 
clients." 

America  is  not  the  only  country  where  oysters  are 
cheap.  At  Caen  one  pays  only  ten  or  twelve  cents 
for  a  dozen  of  the  best  bivalves  from  Ouistreham  and 
Courselles. 

All  along  the  French  coast,  west  and  south,  one 
comes  across  dishes  which  owe  their  unique  and  usually 
delicious  flavor  to  some  special  variety  of  shell  fish, 
peculiar  to  the  place,  which  is  added  to  the  sauce. 

Marseilles  is  perhaps  the  best  place  for  experiment- 
ing with  shell-fishes  new  to  the  visitor's  palate.  That 
this  city  owes  its  international  fame  largely  to  a  special 
marine  stew  called  bouillabaisse  everybody  knows.  As 
I  have  eaten  this  dish  in  Marseilles  itself  but  once  and 
that  so  long  ago  that  I  do  not  remember  the  details, 
I  will  quote  Col.  Newnham-Davis's  graphic  remarks 
on  it: 

"The  Southerners  firmly  believe  that  this  dish  can- 
not be  properly  made  except  of  the  fish  that  swim  in 
the  Mediterranean;  the  rascaz,  a  little  fellow  all  head 
and  eyes,  being  an  essential  in  the  savory  stew,  along 
with  the  eel,  the  lobster,  the  dory,  the  mackerel,  and 
the  girelle.  Thackeray  has  sung  the  ballad  of  the  dish 
as  he  used  to  eat  it  and  his  recette,  because  it  is  poetry,  is 
accepted,  though  it  is  but  the  fresh-water  edition  of  the 
stew.  If  you  do  not  like  oil,  garlic,  and  saffron,  which 
all -come  into  its  composition,  give  it  a  wide  berth;  but 


266  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

I  should  mention  that  the  bouillabaisse  at  the  Reserve 
is  quite  a  mild  and  lady-like  stew  compared  to  that 
one  gets  at  Bregailla's  or  the  restaurants  of  the  Rue 
Noailles." 

Marseilles  is  not  far  from  Italy,  but  before  we  pro- 
ceed to  that  country,  to  learn  what  it  can  teach  us  in 
regard  to  wholesome  and  enjoyable  foods,  we  must 
return  for  a  moment  to  Paris  to  consider  a  few  more 
of  the  specialties  in  which  it  asserts  its  gastronomic 
supremacy. 

However  interesting  the  Provinces  may  be  because 
of  their  local  dishes  and  delicacies,  and  because  of  the 
proof  they  afford  that  the  value  of  well-cooked  food 
is  appreciated  throughout  France,  their  most  important 
function,  from  our  point  of  view,  is  that  of  providing 
the  first-class  material  out  of  which  the  Parisian  cooks 
prepare  their  chefs  d'oeuvres  of  culinary  art.  This 
material  is  sent  daily  from  all  directions  to  the  metrop- 
olis in  special  express  trains,  to  be  offered  for  sale  in 
the  Halles  Centrales,  which,  to  the  lover  of  good  food 
and  beautiful  flowers,  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
spots  on  earth. 

THE   world's    greatest    MARKET   PLACE. 

^  Emile  Zola  m.ade  these  Halles  Centrales  the  back- 
ground of  one  of  his  naturalistic  stories,  "Le  Ventre  de 
Paris."     Even  his  realistic  and  graphic  descriptions 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        267 

fail,  however,  to  convey  an  adequate  idea  of  the  colos- 
sal food  traffic  carried  on  in  this  market  place,  which, 
to  be  sure,  is  now  much  bigger  than  it  was  when 
he  wrote  his  novel,  not  long  after  the  erection  of  the 
vast  structure,  in  1851. 

Ten  pavilions  there  are  in  this  building,  each  of 
them  containing  two  hundred  and  fifty  stalls.  Retail 
dealers  are  installed  in  the  front  pavilions,  while  the 
others  are  occupied  by  the  wholesale  vendors,  whose 
business  also  overflows  into  the  streets  leading  to  the 
market  place.  For  the  storing  of  provisions  there  is 
further  a  cellar  under  the  Halles,  divided  into  twelve 
hundred  compartments. 

To  see  this  food  market  in  its  most  characteristic 
aspects  one  has  to  get  up  long  before  the  sun.  It  was 
half  past  four  on  a  May  morning  when  my  wife  and  I 
unbolted  the  door  of  our  hotel  and  hailed  an  auto-taxi 
to  take  us  to  the  Halles.  All  Paris  was  still  in  bed, 
with  the  exception  of  the  street-cleaners,  who  were  giv- 
ing the  city  its  morning  bath,  a  few  chauffeurs,  and  the 
market  gardeners,  porters,  vendors  and  buyers  whose 
business  it  is  to  bring  and  distribute  the  daily  provisions 
of  the  French  metropolis.  The  following  details  as  to 
what  we  saw  are  taken  from  an  article  written  by  my 
companion : 

"At  this  early  hour  buyers  are  still  rare.  Inquisi- 
tive Americans  may  wander  about  with  the  freedom  of 
disembodied  spirits,  and  without  attracting  much  more 


268  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

attention.     We  kept  discreetly  out  of  the  way  of  hurry- 
ing porters  and  of  swearing  cartmen  who  were  bring- 


i>i.5- 


The  world's  greatest  market  place 


ing  their  huge  loads  of  vegetables  to  market.  From 
the  carts  enormous  mounds  of  carrots,  long  white 
turnips,  cauliflowers,  salads  of  all  kinds,  cabbages, 
sorrel  tied  in  neat  packages,  radishes  black  and  red, 
were  being  unloaded  and  stacked  with  incredible  dex- 
terity and  rapidity,  each  mound  a  picture;  the  carrots 
and  turnips  were  built  up  in  square  fortresses,  the 
vegetables  turned  outward  with  perfect  regularity,  an 
orange  and  white  feast  to  the  eye,  as  well  as  a  promise 
of  joys  to  come  for  the  palate.  Beside  these  are 
heaped  pointed  cabbages  of  freshest  green ;  cauliflowers 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        269 

as  white  as  bridal  bouquets;  lettuces  laid  head  down; 
escarole  and  romaine  lying  on  their  sides,  displaying 
round,  appetizing  tips;  chicory,  a  frizzled  tangle  of 
greenish  white;  while  nearby  bee-hive  heaps  of  rosy 
radishes  add  another  vivid  color  note. 

"A  little  farther  on  our  noses  are  greeted  by  the 
most  exquisite  perfumes,  coming  from  large  baskets  of 
strawberries — the  big  cultivated  ones — and  the  still 
more  fragrant  wild  berries,  the  'petites  f raises  des  bois' 
which  Parisians  so  dote  on.  Cherries,  too,  are  plenti- 
ful, but  they  do  not  fill  the  air  with  luscious  odors,  as 
do  the  strawberries,  though  their  deeper  red,  the  gloss 
of  their  perfect  surface  and  the  contrasting  pale  green 
of  their  stems  are  a  delight  to  the  eye. 

"The  sestheticism  of  the  Paris  Halles  is  one  of  its 
dominant  characteristics.  Flowers  appear  in  every 
corner  mixed  in  with  the  stalls  for  edibles.  Although 
a  whole  cross-street  is  given  over  to  them,  they  are  too 
abundant,  Paris  loves  them  too  well,  and  needs  too 
many  for  them  to  find  sufficient  room  in  one  place 
only.  A  whole  long  block  is  devoted  to  bleuets,  the 
simple  corn  flowers  of  the  fields,  packed  in  bunches  a 
foot  square;  but  roses  reign  supreme,  pink,  red,  tea, 
moss,  of  all  varieties,  picked  fresh  and  adding  their 
perfumes  to  those  of  fruits  and  vegetables. 

"There  are  also  masses  of  irises,  France's  flower,  yel- 
low and  blue;  spicy  pinks,  ranging  from  white  to  dark 
red,  through  all  the  shades  from  palest  salmon  to  deep 


270  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

rose;  pansies,  purple  or  yellow,  bunched  by  colors; 
peonies,  rose-scented,  long  stemmed,  heavy-headed,  in 
crimson,  in  pink,  in  white;  Iceland  poppies,  bitterly 
fragrant,  white,  yellow,  orange. 

"It  is  almost  impossible  to  tear  one's  self  away  from 
this  riot  of  color  and  perfume,  but  there  are  so  many 
sights  that  demand  attention. 

"Even  the  dead  are  not  forgotten  in  the  great 
market,  for  in  one  section  of  the  Halles,  under  its  huge 
resounding  roof,  one  may  buy  the  bead  wreaths  which 
are  made  to  adorn  French  graveyards.  There  is  al- 
most a  western  American  atmosphere  in  this  light 
touching  upon  death  in  this  center  of  vivid  life,  and 
once  more  we  realize  the  kinship  between  French  and 
Americans — except  in  the  matter  of  eating,  in  which 
alas,  we  are  so  far  behind  them. 

"The  fish  market  does  not  open  till  late,  for  Paris 
wants  its  fish  fresh  caught,  but  there  is  the  meat  market 
to  see,  and  there  are  still  streets  and  streets  of  vegeta- 
bles, streets  filled  with  people,  especially  of  busy  por- 
ters with  full  or  empty  'hottes' — the  large  baskets 
used  in  carrying  vegetables — on  their  backs;  or  with 
the  flat  fruit  baskets,  four  feet  by  two  and  a  half, 
balanced  on  their  heads,  on  which  they  carry  loads  of 
other  baskets  filled  with  strawberries,  walking  along  as 
calmly  as  if  they  were  alone  in  the  world,  and  as  if 
the  streets  were  not  slippery  with  vegetable  leaves. 
We  found  it  difficult  to  keep  our  footing  on  this  green 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         271 

refuse  from  cabbages  and  lettuces,  carrots  and  turnips, 
which  had  been  cut  off  at  one  blow  by  the  men  who 
stacked  them.  But  it  was  all  fresh,  clean,  and  sweet 
smelling. 

"By  six  o'clock  the  vegetable  mounds  had  disap- 


Paris  market  porters 

peared  almost  entirely,  as  if  melted  away  by  the  rising 
sun,  and  one  understands  why  photographs  of  the  Paris 
market  are  so  scarce.  When  the  sun  finally  shines 
through  the  soft  morning  haze  there  is  little  left  to 
snap-shot.  Three  porters  in  blue  blouses  with  'hottes' 
on  their  backs  politely  consented  to  pose,  and  a  pretty 
Parisian  girl,  brown-eyed  and  red-cheeked,  had  gladly 
stood  near  her  pile  of  sorrel  to  be  caught  in  the  cam- 
era. 


272  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

"The  artichokes  do  not  pose  well.  Great  baskets 
heaped  with  these  green  scaly  globes  fill  one  street, 
but  to  catch  them  is  next  to  impossible.  First  a  cart 
gets  stalled  in  front  of  a  particularly  fine  group,  and 
when  that  is  gone  there  is  a  mass  of  people  who  must 
pass.  Every  one  who  notices  the  photographic  at- 
tempts asks  Is  it  for  the  Cinema"?' — the  Paris  rage  of 
the  moment — and  one  good-natured,  impertinent 
Parisian  asks  if  photographs  are  for  sale  and  at  what 
price.  He  is  really  so  'sympathique,'  in  the  French 
sense,  that  one  immediately  confides  one's  desires  and 
difficulties  to  him. 

"At  the  chicken  stalls,  where  the  would-be  photogra- 
pher has  to  change  a  film,  she  finds  an  exhibition  of 
the  lower-class  rudeness,  and  also  of  the  lower-class 
politeness  of  the  French  market  woman.  From  a  cor- 
ner which  seemed  to  belong  to  no  one  she  is  rudely 
requested  to  move  on,  while  ten  steps  farther  on  she  is 
made  welcome,  given  a  chair,  questioned  about 
the  'Cinema,'  and  apologized  to  for  the  lack  of  civility 
of  the  other  woman. 

"At  another  stall  among  the  vegetables,  one  saucy 
young  woman  gets  well  laughed  at  by  her  companions. 
She  is  not  too  busy  to  notice  the  strangers,  and,  after 
looking  them  over  with  rather  an  impertinent  stare, 
she  remarks  that  it  is  'funny  to  see  these  English  people 
in  Paris.'  A  laughing  rejoinder  from  the  strangers 
that  they  are  not  English  but  Americans  makes  her 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        273 

look  abashed,  much  to  the  amusement  of  the  other 
women. 

"In  this  retail  department  there  are  plenty  of  string 
beans  which  are  better  in  Paris  than  anywhere  else, 


Halles  Centrales 


but  the  best  of  which  an  ignorant  American  would  not 
think  of  buying.  They  are  small  and  thin,  and 
streaked  with  black,  almost  as  if  rusted.  To  the  eye 
they  are  far  less  tempting  than  the  thick  rich  green 
beans  in  our  markets,  but  in  taste  they  are  more  lus- 


274  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

cious.  On  the  other  hand,  French  peas  are  not  equal, 
usually,  to  the  English  and  American  ones,  being 
harder  and  less  sweet,  and  therefore  their  flavor  is 
not  impaired,  as  ours  would  be,  by  the  fact  that  the 
market-women  sell  some  of  them  shelled.  A  real 
genre  picture  they  make,  three  of  these  women, 
dropping  the  pale  green  pearls  into  wooden  bowls,  and 
talking  even  faster  than  they  shell. 

"We  passed  rather  hastily  through  the  meat  market, 
although  that  is  quite  as  interesting  in  its  way  as  the 
other  quarters,  but  we  were  especially  desirous  to  see 
the  fish  market  in  its  glory.  However,  we  had  a  rapid 
view  of  great  beef  carcasses  hung  in  rows,  hundreds  of 
lambs,  calves  and  other  creatures,  and  of  the  neat  stalls 
where  calves'  heads,  pigs'  and  lambs'  feet,  livers,  sweet- 
breads, brains,  and  even  lungs  are  all  hung  in  neat 
array,  or  displayed  attractively  on  slabs.  French  deal- 
ers know  to  perfection  how  to  set  off  their  wares.  They 
have  special  methods  of  presenting  their  fine  poultry 
so  that  no  buyer  can  resist  them,  no  matter  what  the 
price  may  be  for  turkeys,  ducks,  capons  and  poulardes. 

"Vine  and  other  leaves  for  decorative  purposes  are 
sold  regularly  in  the  market,  and  no  one  who  has  not 
seen  it  can  imagine  how  much  more  tempting  a  fine 
Camembert  or  Pont  I'Eveque  can  appear  when  it  is 
set  carefully  on  a  fresh  green  leaf.  The  large  cheeses 
cannot  be  thus  decorated,  but  the  smaller  ones,  as  well 
as  the  pats  of  Normandy  butter  and  the  tempting  little 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         275 

brown  pots  of  delicately  sour  'creme  d'Tsigny/  are 
always  displayed  in  this  way.  The  fine  fruits,  too, 
are  made  the  object  of  solicitous  care;  in  one  corner 
of  the  market  we  ran  across  two  men  who  were  tenderly 
unloading  the  most  fragrant  melons,  and  arranging 
fine  peaches,  six  in  a  box,  laid  carefully  on  a  bed  of 
soft  white  cotton.  The  perfect  bunches  of  grapes  for 
which  some  wealthy  American  may,  later  in  the  day, 
pay  a  fabulous  price  at  the  Cafe  de  Paris  or  at  Voisin's, 
are  temptingly  exhibited  in  the  same  mannei.  It  is 
strange  that  Paris  is  generally  more  aesthetic  and  ar- 
tistic in  its  food  and  flower  displays  than  in  those 
of  the  many  other  luxuries  and  fashions  it  provides 
for  the  world. 

"At  six- thirty  the  fish  market  opens,  and  as  one 
approaches,  the  deafening  noise  of  the  wholesalers, 
crying  their  wares,  and  selling  to  the  highest  bidder, 
fills  the  ears.  The  nose,  too,  takes  cognizance  of  the 
perfume  of  the  sea,  the  salt  freshness  of  recently  caught 
fish,  quite  different  from  the  ancient  and  fish-like  smell 
of  an  ordinary  New  York  fish  stall.  We  breathe  it 
in  with  almost  as  much  pleasure  as  we  did  the  fruit, 
vegetable  and  flower  perfumes.  Here  again  the  eyes 
are  satisfied  as  well  as  the  nose.  Pale  brown  fish  in 
a  pale  brown  basket  may  be  an  accident,  but  it  is  a 
happy  one.  Quantities  of  spiny  'langoustes,'  with 
long  feelers,  splotched  with  yellow  and  red ;  of  lobsters 
with  huge  claws;  of  neatly  arranged  soles,  lying  in 


276  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

pairs;  of  beautifully  marked  Spanish  mackerel,  of 
great  white  skates,  and  of  many  other  sea-fish  are  being 
rapidly  transferred  from  the  wholesale  to  the  retail 
departments.     In  the  fresh- water  section,  huge  tanks. 


A  bit  of  the  great  Paris  market 


with  water  flowing  in  rapidly  from  great  faucets,  hold 
carp,  eels,  and  other  fish,  all  alive ;  but  the  greater  num- 
ber of  tanks  are  filled  with  scrambling,  hundreds  of 
crawfish,  the  much  prized  French  'ecrevisse,'  which, 
with  the  langoustes,  reach  the  high-water  mark  for 
shell-fish  prices  in  the  restaurants — ^but  they  are  worth 
it.  The  ecrevisse  is  no  better  than  our  Oregon  craw- 
fish, but  the  latter  are  being  rapidly  exterminated, 
whereas  in  France  the  delicious  creatures  are  properly 
protected. 

"In  this  same  section  another  French  delicacy,  snails, 
are  for  sale.  Boxes  full  of  them  may  be  seen,  some  of 
the  snails  remaining  patiently  in  their  home  corral, 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        277 

while  others,  more  adventurous,  were  crawling  up  the 
fish  tanks,  or  had  even  dropped  to  the  floor,  owing  to 
their  too  great  desire  to  explore  the  world. 

"The  market  itself  is  quite  as  much  inclined  to  spread 
as  the  snails.  All  the  adjacent  streets  are  filled  with 
shops  for  edibles,  especially  of  the  less  perishable  va- 
riety, like  cheeses  of  all  kinds,  some  as  big  as  auto- 
wheels.  The  cabarets  do  a  brisk  business  in  feeding 
the  providers  of  Paris  food,  but  foolishly  we  failed  to 
try  one  of  these  places  to  discover  what  kind  of  break- 
fast the  food-raisers  themselves  eat,  and  we  went  back 
to  our  hotel  hungry,  past  all  this  mass  of  eatables,  past 
cafes  which  were  just  being  opened,  where  floors  were 
being  washed  and  chairs  lay  inhospitably  on  the  tables. 
One  almost  felt  as  if  Paris  never  was  ready  to  eat 
breakfast." 

Besides  the  Halles  Centrales  there  are  a  number  of 
smaller  covered  markets  distributed  over  the  city,  much 
frequented  on  certain  days  by  all  classes.  Women 
everywhere  are  fond  of  shopping,  but  in  France  foreign- 
ers as  well  as  natives  revel  in  the  joys  of  marketing. 
Read,  for  instance,  this  joyous  outburst  of  an  American 
girl  dwelling  in  Paris  for  her  musical  education : 

"Now  the  mystery  why  the  shops  and  galleries  are 
almost  deserted  by  the  French  on  Wednesdays  and  Sat- 
urdays is  explained.  They  are  all  at  the  market, — a 
dense  struggling,  chattering  mob,  pawing  away  at  the 
fresh  country  produce,  while  above  the  din  rise  the 


278  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

shrieks  and  howls  of  the  booth  venders.  A  lively,  a 
typically  French  scene.  You  get  one  of  those  French 
net-work  bags,  which  will  stretch  to  hold  nearly  a 
bushel  of  supplies,  and  sail  into  the  thick  of  the  fray. 
By  the  time  you  are  out  on  the  other  side  you  are  loaded 
to  the  ears  with  enough  stuff  to  last  the  party  a  week 
and  have  spent  just  four  francs.  Celery,  one  cent  a 
bunch.  Fresh  country  potatoes,  35  cents  a  bushel. 
Country  killed  meats  at  one-half  city  prices.  It  is 
more  fun  than  a  circus,  and  from  that  time  on  you 
will  set  aside  an  hour  every  Wednesday  and  Saturday 
to  go  a-marketing,  as  one  of  the  prime  joys  of  life." 

MODEL    MARKET    GARDENS. 

The  biggest  vegetables  and  fruits  are  by  no  means 
always  the  best.  But,  given  a  good  variety,  the  ideal 
to  be  aimed  at  is  to  have  it  as  big  as  possible  while  still 
young  and  tender. 

This  ideal  the  French  market-gardeners  live  up  to, 
and  that  is  what  makes  their  productions  a  joy,  first  to 
the  eyes,  and  then  to  the  palate. 

Intensive  cultivation  is  the  key  to  the  mystery  of 
how  it 's  done.  Expert  testimony  is  to  the  effect  that 
the  market  gardens  in  and  around  Paris  are  "the  best 
and  most  thoroughly  cultivated  patches  of  ground  in 
Europe."  From  them  "at  least  threefold  more  pro- 
duce is  gathered  than  from  similar  extent  of  garden- 
ground  elsewhere."     Though  the  climate  is  far  from 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        279 

mild — and  even  in  the  harshest  months — whole  train- 
loads  of  lettuce  heads  and  other  vegetables  are  sent 
daily  from  Paris  to  other  cities,  some  of  them  as  far 
away  as  Russia. 

Eight  crops  in  one  year  are  frequently  gathered  from 
a  garden.  No  time  is  wasted ;  while,  for  instance,  the 
cos  lettuce  in  one  bed  rears  its  head  on  high,  the  ground 
underneath  is  already  carpeted  with  the  green  leaves  of 
a  young  crop  of  escaroles.  This  rotation  is  one  of  the 
secrets  of  success.  Thorough  cultivation  and  enrich- 
ment of  the  soil  constitute  another,  some  of  the  crops 
being  grown  in  beds  made  up  almost  entirely  of  manure. 
But  mainly,  it  is  "owing  to  the  abundant  watering  of 
these  gardens  that  the  Paris  markets  are  throughout  the 
hot  season  better  supplied  with  crisp,  tender,  fresh 
vegetables  than  any  other  capital  in  Europe." 

Water  makes  up  nearly  the  whole  substance  of  most 
vegetables — for  instance,  over  88  per  cent,  of  carrots, 
90  of  cabbage,  93  of  lettuce  and  pumpkins,  95  of  cu- 
cumbers. Withhold  it  on  a  few  sunny  days,  and  the 
vegetables  become  mere  masses  of  tough  fiber.  As  long 
ago  as  1878,  W.  Robinson,  F.  L.  S.,  whose  words  I 
have  just  cited,  called  attention  in  his  valuable  and 
beautifully  illustrated  book  on  the  Parks  and  Gardens 
of  Paris  to  the  anomalous  fact  that  though  all  failures 
in  English  gardens  are  attributed  to  "want  of  sun,"  nev- 
ertheless if  there  is  a  warm  and  sunny  season  the  mar- 
ket supplies  soon  run  short,  owing  to  the  absence  of  any 


28o  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

preparation  for  watering  garden  crops.  "Three  warm 
days  in  July  show  their  effect  in  Covent  Garden,  in- 
convenience the  housekeeper,  and  injure  and  reduce  the 
supplies  of  vegetable  food  at  a  time  when  these  are 
more  than  ever  important  for  health." 

Since  that  time,  no  doubt,  some  improvement  has 
been  effected  in  England,  but  Covent  Garden  Market 
is  still  largely  dependent  on  French  gardeners  for  its 
best  products,  in  the  line  of  vegetables,  and  also  of 
fruits  and  berries. 

MUSHROOMS    AND    TRUFFLES. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  chapters  in  Mr.  Robin- 
son's book  is  on  Mushroom  Culture  in  Caves  Under 
Paris,  those  he  visited  being  at  Montrouge,  just  outside 
the  fortifications.  The  beds  are  from  sixty  to  eighty 
feet  under  the  street  and  from  this  single  cave  the  daily 
gathering  averaged  from  four  hundred  to  fifteen  hun- 
dred pounds,  the  favorite  size  of  the  mushroom  gath- 
ered being  about  that  of  a  chestnut. 

There  are  thousands  of  abandoned  stone  quarries  in 
France,  hundreds  of  which  are  used  by  mushroom 
growers,  who  earn  many  millions  a  year  by  thus  cater- 
ing intelligently  and  zealously  to  the  palates  of  their 
countrymen — and  of  foreigners,  too,  for  there  is  a 
large  export  trade — in  mushrooms,  fresh,  canned,  pow- 
dered, bottled  in  oil  or  butter,  or  preserved  in  other 
ways. 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        281 

An  odd  detail  about  these  caves  is  that,  although 
they  are  well  ventilated,  the  mushrooms  refuse,  after  a 
while,  to  grow  in  them  till  after  a  general  cleaning  out 
and  a  rest  of  a  year  or  two. 

Although,  both  as  a  separate  dish  and  as  an  ingredi- 
ent of  diverse  sauces,  soups,  stews,  and  gravies,  mush- 
rooms play  an  important  part  in  the  cuisine  of  the 
French,  they  seem  on  the  whole  to  risk  the  eating  of 
fewer  varieties  than  are  consumed  in  some  other  coun- 
tries. About  a  thousand  different  varieties  are  known 
to  botanists,  yet  in  Paris,  as  I  was  informed  by  a  pro- 
fessor of  the  University  of  Lyons,  only  twenty-five 
kinds  are  commonly  eaten,  while  in  the  markets  of 
Lyons  only  half-a-dozen  sorts  may  be  offered  for  sale. 
One  cannot  but  admire  this  prudent  self-denial  on  the 
part  of  a  race  so  addicted  to  the  pleasures  of  the  table. 

In  Germany  there  are  frequent  expositions  of  mush- 
rooms and  other  fungi,  for  educational  purposes.  In 
England  the  Board  of  Agriculture  issued  in  1912  a 
little  book  entitled  "Edible  and  Poisonous  Fungi," 
with  colored  pictures  of  more  than  a  dozen  good  mush- 
rooms besides  the  one  usually  consumed  {Agraricus 
Campestris),  An  English  friend  of  mine  likes  to  re- 
call the  days  of  his  boyhood  when  his  breakfast  con- 
sisted of  several  platefuls  of  mushrooms  which  he  gath- 
ered every  morning  fresh  under  the  trees. 

In  American  forests  mushrooms  grow  in  superabun- 
dance, but  few  are  gathered  for  the  table,  though  most 


282  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

of  them  are  harmless.  Speaking  of  the  hills  of  the 
Blue  Ridge  Mountains  near  Harper's  Ferry  Dr.  Wiley 
says  he  has  seen  "large  areas  of  the  forest  almost  cov- 
ered with  these  growths  in  August  and  September,  but 
the  courage  leading  to  their  consumption  was  want- 
ing."^ 

A  picture  in  the  Fliegende  Blatter  shows  a  little  girl 
bringing  a  basket  of  mushrooms  from  the  woods.  Be- 
ing asked  by  the  pastor  in  passing  if  she  is  not  afraid 
her  family  may  be  poisoned,  she  answers  cheerfully, 
"Oh,  no!     We  sell  these." 

The  nutritive  value  of  mushrooms  is  small.  It  is 
on  account  of  their  delicious  and  varied  Flavors  that 
they  are  gathered  and  cultivated;  and  Flavor,  as  has 
been  pointed  out  so  many  times  in  the  precedmg  pages, 
is  so  important  to  good  digestion  and  consequent 
health  that  it  is  a  great  pity  that  in  eating  them  one 
runs  the  risk  of  a  painful  death ;  at  least  in  the  case  of 
wild  mushrooms,  some  of  which  aggravate  their  offen- 
siveness  by  trying  to  look  as  much  as  possible  like 
certain  harmless  specimens. 

While  truffles,  like  mushrooms,  grow  all  over 
Europe,  as  well  as  on  other  continents,  in  many  varie- 
ties, it  is  the  French,  again,  who  have  taught  the 
world  the  most  valuable  lessons  regarding  their  diverse 

1  An  excellent  summary  of  what  it  is  important  to  know  about  mush- 
rooms and  toadstools  is  included  in  Dr.  Wiley's  "Foods  and  Their 
Adulteration."  Of  the  many  books  specially  devoted  to  this  subject 
Gibson's  is  perhaps  the  best. 


FRENCH    SUPREMACY        283 

uses  for  flavoring  soups,  sauces,  meats,  and  gravies. 

The  French  varieties  happen  to  be  the  best  of  all, 
especially  those  grown  in  Perigord  and  in  the  Depart- 
ment Vaucluse,  which  was  reafforested  in  1858  with 
oaks,  in  the  shade  of  which  these  fungi  are  particularly 
at  home. 

In  Russia,  formerly,  bears  were  used  to  unearth  them, 
but  to-day  pigs  and  trained  dogs  are  relied  on  for  lo- 
cating the  ripe  specimens — a  feat  which  man,  with  his 
inferior  powers  of  smell,  cannot  imitate;  the  result 
being  that  when  he  tries  to  harvest  them  himself,  great 
waste  results  through  the  uncovering  of  unripe  speci- 
mens. Maybe,  some  day,  our  noses  will  be  so  well 
trained  that  truffle-hunters  will  be  able  to  get  along 
without  pigs,  dogs,  bears — or  flies,  which,  in  warm 
weather,  hover  over  the  spots  where  the  ripe  fungi  are 
hidden  from  the  eye. 

Truffles  are  expensive,  and  therefore  often  adulter- 
ated— with  dirt,  to  increase  their  weight,  with  unripe 
tubercles  that  have  little  or  no  flavor,  and  in  various 
other  ways,  including  the  making  of  artificial  truffles 
from  potatoes.  An  English  writer  says  that  the  "false 
truffle"  (^Scleroderma  vulgare)  "is  extremely  common 
on  the  surface  of  the  ground  in  woods,  and  is  gathered 
by  Italians  and  Frenchmen  in  Epping  Forest  for  the 
inferior  dining-rooms  of  London,  where  continental 
dishes  are  served.  It  is  a  worthless,  offensive,  and  pos- 
sibly dangerous  fungus." 


284  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

TRAINING    TREES    FOR    FANCY    FRUITS. 

Good  fruit  is  more  abundant  and  cheaper  in  the 
United  States  than  anywhere  in  Europe.  When  sun- 
ripened  and  picked  at  the  right  time,  it  is  all  that  fruit 
should  be.  Unfortunately,  it  is  not  usually  brought 
into  our  markets  in  that  condition. 

The  Paris  restaurants  have  a  way  of  adorning  their 
entrance  with  a  stand  covered  with  various  kinds  of 
properly  ripened  fruit,  the  fragrance  of  which  serves 
as  an  appetizer  preceding  the  hors  d'oeuvre  or  the  soup. 
They  are  extra  choice  fruits,  and  expensive,  but  in  the 
markets  one  can  buy  the  same  very  much  more  reason- 
ably. 

In  the  raising  of  fruit  the  French  rely  less  on  climate 
than  on  their  own  skill  and  care.  The  best  peaches 
eaten  in  Paris  do  not  come  from  the  Sunny  South,  but 
from  the  neighborhood  of  the  city,  where  they  are 
grown  against  walls,  and  carefully  cultivated  and  pro- 
tected. When  visiting  France  at  the  request  of  the 
London  "Times"  to  study  the  methods  which  have 
made  fruit  in  that  country  so  good,  Mr.  W.  Robinson 
found  it  a  common  thing  to  see  a  professor  of  fruit- 
culture  and  his  class  assembled  round  a  tree,  pruning 
it  and  discussing  every  operation  as  it  goes  on. 

The  pupils  have  much  to  learn,  for  the  French  do  not 
simply  cultivate  trees  in  orchards  as  we  do,  but  subject 
them  to  much  trimming  and  bending  of  the  branches 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        285 

so  as  to  secure  the  best  distribution  of  the  sap  and  the 
greatest  amount  of  sunlight  and  warmth. 

The  Japanese  have  taught  us  how  to  prune  a 
chrysanthemum  plant  so  as  to  make  it  produce  giant 
blossoms.  Our  florists  make  use  of  the  same  method 
to  concentrate  the  sap  and  vigor  of  a  root  and  stem  in  a 
single  perfect  American  Beauty  rose.  It  is  not  size 
alone  that  is  aimed  at.  Sometimes  the  result  of  such  a 
method  is  a  thing  like  the  Belle  Angevine  pear  which, 
though  flavorless,  may  fetch  a  guinea  in  London  be- 
cause of  its  size  and  beauty.  As  a  rule,  however, 
Flavor  is  carefully  safe-guarded.  The  leaves  are  kept 
trimmed  so  as  to  enable  the  sun  to  do  its  best  in  devel- 
oping an  aroma. 

Outside  of  France  the  finest  collection  of  espalier 
fruit  trees  I  have  seen  is  on  Paderewski's  estate,  at 
Morges,  on  the  Swiss  side  of  Lake  Geneva.  It  is  sur- 
prising what  a  variety  of  forms  the  trees  can  be  made 
to  assume,  as  the  fancy  of  the  cultivator  decides. 


BREAD  CRUST  VERSUS  CRUMB. 

Although  the  publishers  of  this  book,  when  they 
asked  me  to  write  it,  generously  allowed  me  as  much 
elbow  room  as  I  might  desire,  I  must  resist  the  tempta- 
tion to  dwell  much  longer  on  the  details  of  French  gas- 
tronomic leadership.  To  exhaust  the  subject  would 
require  a  whole  volume  much  bigger  than  this.     Before 


286  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

closing  this  long  chapter,  however,  I  must  dwell  briefly 
on  three  more  important  kinds  of  food — ^bread,  butter, 
and  cheese — in  the  making  of  which  the  French  excel. 

Unlike  ourselves  and  our  English  cousins,  they  par- 
take of  nothing  but  bread  and  butter  for  breakfast, 
wherefore  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  take  particular 
pains  to  have  these  good.  Bread  is  also  eaten  at  other 
meals  much  more  freely  than  in  other  countries,  includ- 
ing Germany  and  Austria,  which  alone  rival  France  in 
the  making  of  it. 

The  best  French  bread  is  made  in  such  a  way  that  to 
have  it  in  prime  condition  it  must  always  be  fresh.  At 
all  hours,  therefore,  one  sees  boys  hurrying  along  the 
streets  with  baskets  loaded  with  tall  loaves.  Without 
exaggeration,  these  loaves  are  often  a  yard  long,  but 
no  thicker  than  a  man's  forearm.  This  is  the  Parisian 
bread  par  excellence^  and  what  is  most  characteristic 
about  it  is  that  it  is  practically  all  crust. 

Bread  is  regarded  as  the  staff  of  life — an  English 
writer,  Winslow,  called  it  so  as  long  ago  as  1624 — and 
it  has  become  so  more  and  more  in  recent  centuries.  It 
is  therefore  of  the  utmost  interest  to  know  how  the 
French,  who  admittedly  know  more  about  good  food 
and  the  best  cooking  than  any  other  people  in  the 
world,  bake  their  bread.  They  bake  it,  as  I  have  just 
said,  in  such  a  way  that  it  is  nearly  all  crust. 

Nearly  all  crust!  And  the  French,  it  is  needless  to 
say,  dote  on  this  crust.     For  the  crumb  they  have  no 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        287 

liking;  often  you  may  see  a  Frenchman  poke  out  with 
his  thumb  what  little  crumb  there  is  and  leave  it  on 
his  plate. 

How  different  this  from  the  practices  prevalent 
among  the  least  gastronomic  of  civilized  nations — the 
English  and  the  Americans ! 

The  English  way  was  graphically  described  in  the 
"Observations  on  Mastication"  which  Dr.  Campbell 
contributed  to  the  London  "Lancet"  (July  and  Au- 
gust, 1903): 

"Witness  the  fashion  of  eating  bread-and-butter  at 
any  place  of  refreshment,  and  the  last  thing  you  will 
be  served  with  is  a  plateful  of  crusts  of  bread.  Many 
establishments,  indeed,  make  a  regular  practice  of  giv- 
ing away  their  crusts  as  unsaleable.  Thus,  the  rectan- 
gular loaves  used  for  bread-and-butter  in  the  aerated 
bread-shops  are  cut  transversely  into  slices,  each  loaf 
thus  yielding  two  end  crusts  which  are  put  into  baskets 
for  the  poor,  only  the  soft  crumby  pieces  being  re- 
served for  the  customers." 

Similar  practices  prevail  in  the  United  States  and 
Canada. 

The  lowest  biological  specimen — mere  gastronomic 
protoplasm — is  the  pale,  ten-dollar-a-week  clerk  whose 
deadly  substitute  for  bread  is  the  half-baked  dough 
("butter  cake")  he  eats  at  lunch  time — a  dyspeptic 
mess  without  the  suspicion  of  a  crust  on  it.  His  taste, 
unfortunately,  is  shared  by  some  of  the  well-to-do, 


288  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

whose  education  has  been  neglected.  Two  youths 
walked  into  the  breakfast  room  of  an  Italian  hotel  one 
morning  and  sat  down  at  the  table  next  to  ours.  The 
first  thing  they  did  was  to  push  away  the  nicely 
browned  crusty  rolls  and  ask  the  waiter  if  he  had  any 
"soft  bread."  He  had  none,  of  course.  He  should 
have  told  them — I  came  near  doing  it  myself — that 
those  Italian  rolls,  though  not  equal  to  the  best 
Parisian,  had  much  more  flavor  and  were  much  more 
digestible  than  the  home-made  crumb  they  were  crying 
for — like  babes  for  pap,  though  their  teeth  looked 
sound. 

In  many  New  York  hotels  and  restaurants,  imita- 
tions of  Parisian  loaves  or  rolls  are  now  placed  on  the 
tables.  Some  of  them  are  quite  good — a  great  im- 
provement on  the  ordinary  American  bread — yet  most 
of  the  diners  look  at  them  askance.  In  downtown 
lunch  places,  if  you  fee  the  waiter  regularly,  he  will  not 
insult  you  by  putting  a  crusty  end  piece  on  your  plate. 
I  always  fee  well,  and  therefore  have  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty in  making  the  waiters  believe  that  I  sincerely, 
honestly  and  truly  prefer  an  end  piece — a  particularly 
brown  one  at  that.  Some  of  them  look  at  me  with  the 
incredulous  expression  of  the  farmer  who,  on  seeing  a 
giraffe,  exclaimed,  "There  ain't  no  such  animal !" 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  I  prefer  the  goldenhued  end- 
piece  because  I  find  it  infinitely  richer  in  flavor  than  the 
crumb.     It  is  for  the  same  reason,  principally,  that  the 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         289 

French  insist  on  having  crusty  bread.  There  are  other 
reasons — they  may  not  be  aware  of  them  but  instinc- 
tively they  act  on  them.  Let  me  give  them  in  the  words 
of  a  distinguished  medical  man — the  same  Dr.  Camp- 
bell, Physician  to  the  London  Northwest  Hospital, 
whose  words  I  have  just  quoted.  "Loaves,"  he  writes, 
"should  be  shaped  so  as  to  give  a  maximum  of  crust 
and  a  minimum  of  crumb,  and  should  be  baked  hard. 
Such  loaves  are  quite  as  nutritious  as  the  ordinary  ones, 
and  much  more  digestible,  containing  as  they  do  an 
abundance  of  dextrine  and  not  a  little  maltose,  and 
compelling  efficient  mastication,  especially  if  eaten,  as 
they  should  be,  without  any  fluid.  A  lady  who  has 
been  catering  for  a  large  number  of  girls  gives  the 
bread  in  this  way,  and  she  tells  me  that  there  is  keen 
competition  for  the  most  crusty  portions'' 

The  words  I  have  italicized  are  of  the  utmost  sig- 
nificance. They  show  that  if  English — or  American — 
girls,  or  boys,  or  women  and  men — ^prefer  crumb  to 
crust,  it  is  not  owing  to  innate  depravity  but  to  lack  of 
opportunity  to  learn  better.  Give  them  a  chance  to 
ascertain  the  superiority  of  crust  to  crumb  and  they 
promptly  take  to  it  as  if  they  were  in  Paris  born. 

They  cannot  be  blamed  for  neglecting  American 
crust,  for  the  crust  of  the  ordinary  American  bread 
actually  is  inferior  to  the  crumb,  being  tough,  leathery, 
and  flavorless.  But  the  American  crumb  is  nearly 
always  indigestible.     The  moral  of  the  story  is  that 


290  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

we  should  discard  it  in  favor  of  Parisian  crusty  bread, 
boycotting  every  baker  who  does  not  honestly  try  to 
surround  his  loaves  with  crisp,  toothsome  crust. 

Ordinary  American  bread  is  greatly  improved  in 
flavor  and  digestibility  when  it  is  toasted.  Toasting 
is  the  conversion  of  crumb  into  crust.  It  is  resorted  to 
daily  by  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Americans  who, 
either  knowingly  or  instinctively,  adopt  this  way  of 
avoiding  the  soggy  bread  which  ruins  the  stomach 
and  undermines  the  health.  On  this  point  let  me 
cite  the  words  of  another  medical  expert,  Dr.  Alexander 
Bryce,  author  of  "Dietetics,"  "Modern  Theories  of 
Diet,"  "The  Laws  of  Life  and  Health,"  etc.,  endorsing 
the  views  of  Russia's  most  eminent  physiologist: 

"Pavlov  demonstrated  that  the  chewing  of  fresh, 
moist  bread  [such  as  most  Americans  insist  on  having] 
produced  no  secretion  of  saliva  worth  mentioning,  but 
dry  bread  caused  the  saliva  to  flow  in  large  quantities. 
Stale  bread,  crust  of  bread,  toast,  zwieback  (double- 
toasted  bread),  and  plenty  of  biscuit  compel  fairly  pro- 
longed mastication  with  plenty  of  saliva,  while  soft 
bread  is  usually  bolted  with  no  production  of  diges- 
tive juice  of  any  consequence." 

Besides  the  yard-long  loaves  referred  to,  the  French 
have  an  endless  variety  of  breads,  one  of  the  best  of 
them  being  the  crescent-shaped  "croissants"  usually 
served  with  the  morning  coffee.  Different  provinces 
and  towns  have  their  own  special  kinds,  but  Paris  is  the 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        291 

paradise  for  bread-eaters;  elsewhere,  the  bread  is  not 
so  uniformly  excellent,  though  nearly  always  better 
than  that  served  in  most  other  countries. 

While  the  preponderance  of  crust  over  crumb  is  the 
most  important  aspect  of  Parisian  bread,  there  are  a 
number  of  other  things  to  which  it  owes  its  excellence. 
For  a  high-class  product  it  is  important  to  select  flour 
made  of  wheat  which  has  a  particularly  fine  flavor. 
The  Flavor  is  also  largely  affected  by  the  milling,  the 
way  the  dough  is  made  and  kneeded,  the  quick  or  slow 
fermentation,  the  kind  of  oven  used  and  its  tempera- 
ture, the  length  of  leaving  the  bread  exposed  to  the 
heat,  and  many  other  things. 

A  French  baker's  apprentice  has  to  go  through  a  four- 
years'  course  of  studies  before  he  is  considered  an  ex- 
pert. Is  it  a  wonder  that  such  favorable  results  are 
achieved?  But  besides  his  knowledge  he  must  have  an 
infinite  capacity  for  taking  pains.  Plus  on  se  donnera 
de  peine  pour  petrir  la  pdte^  plus  on  ohtiendra  de  pain^ 
et  meilleur  il  sera.  On  n'a  rien  de  hon  sans  travail, 
"The  more  trouble  you  take  in  kneading  the  dough, 
the  more  bread  you  will  get,  and  the  better  it  will  be. 
You  cannot  get  anything  good  without  work." 

So  say  the  authors — there  are  three  of  them — of  the 
"Nouveau  Manuel  Complet  du  Boulanger,"  published 
in  Paris  by  L.  Mulo.  It  is  a  book  of  626  pages  with  93 
illustrations.  Besides  an  introduction  which  gives  a 
bird's-eye  view  of  the  history  of  baking,  there  are  ten 


292  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

chapters  treating  exhaustively  of  wheats  and  flours  and 
their  adulteration;  on  the  making  of  dough  and  the  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  leaven;  on  troughs  and  ovens;  on  dis- 
eases of  bread;  on  the  peculiarities  of  the  breads  of 
various  countries,  including,  of  course,  those  of  France, 
Austria  and  Germany  as  the  most  important. 

Summing  up  their  conclusions,  the  authors  of  this 
encyclopedic  work  say,  under  the  subhead,  "Signes 
Caracteristiques  d'un  Pain  Bien  Fabrique,"  "Well- 
made  bread  must  be  light,  well-raised  and  well-puffed 
up.  Its  color  must  be  a  particular  yellow,  shading  into 
brown;  it  must  be  resonant  when  it  is  struck;  its  sur- 
face must  be  smooth,  the  inside  full  of  cavities  and 
grandes  crevasses;  its  crumb  white,  very  spongy  and 
very  elastic." 

HOW    THE    BEST    BUTTER    IS    MADE. 

"If  I  were  king,"  exclaimed  a  Sicilian  shepherd  boy, 
"I  would  have  goosefat  with  my  bread  every  day." 

While  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans  already  made 
many  varieties  of  bread,  butter  was  known  to  them 
only  as  a  medicine,  olive  oil  being  generally  used  in 
place  of  it  in  the  preparing  of  meals. 

It  was  probably  in  Italy  that  really  palatable  butter 
was  first  churned,  and  very  good  butter  is  made  in  that 
country  to-day;  (that  poor  Sicilian  boy  had  evidently 
never  tasted  any,  else  he  would  have  preferred  it  even 
to  goosefat!)  but  the  best  butter  in  the  world  is  mar- 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        293 

keted  in  Paris.  Not  once,  during  half-a-dozen  so- 
journs in  that  city,  have  I  had  butter  served  which  it 
was  not  a  pleasure  to  eat. 

While  bad  butter,  such  as  most  Americans  eat  daily, 
seems  to  be  virtually  tabooed  in  France,  there  are  of 
course  many  degrees  of  excellence.  In  May,  1912, 
we  visited  a  number  of  the  leading  Paris  restaurants 
with  the  special  object  of  studying  these  degrees. 
Everywhere  the  butter  was  very  good,  but  the  best, 
my  wife  and  I  agreed  after  repeated  trials,  was  served 
at  the  Boeuf  a  la  Mode.  I  therefore  asked  the  head- 
waiter  to  find  out  from  the  dairy  just  how  it  was  made. 
He  did  so,  and  received  in  reply  a  letter  which  is  here- 
with reprinted  in  a  translation: 

In  response  to  your  communication  of  the  twentieth  I  take 
pleasure  In  answering  your  questions.  Our  butter  Is  always 
made  with  the  cream  of  the  previous  day  and  after  this  cream 
has  fermented  twelve  hours.  In  this  way  to-day's  milk  Is 
skimmed  at  about  noon  and  the  cream  Is  cooled  to  37-40  de- 
grees [Fahrenheit],  then  It  Is  put  In  a  place  where  It  rises  to 
42°-47°  [Fahrenheit]  and  at  this  temperature  It  is  kept  as 
nearly  as  possible  till  the  next  morning,  when  It  Is  churned. 

This  method  Is  a  satisfactory  one,  and  our  butter  Is  right. 

Believing  that  these  directions  will  prove  to  be  what  your 
customer  wishes  I  beg  you  to  receive  my  best  salutations. 

Marchand. 

The  information  given  in  this  letter  relates  to  one 
point  only,  as  that  was  the  only  point  I  had  inquired 
about. 


294  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

What  I  wanted  to  know  was  whether  this  super- 
excellent  butter  was  made  of  sweet  cream  or  of  sour 
cream. 

Edwin  H.  Webster,  Chief  of  the  Dairy  Division, 
states  in  No.  241  of  the  Farmers'  Bulletins,  issued  by 
the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture,  that 
"practically  speaking,  all  butter  used  in  this  country  is 
churned  from  sour  cream.  Sweet  cream  butter  to  most 
users  tastes  flat  and  insipid."  He  adds  that  the 
American  dairyman,  when  his  cream  is  not  sour,  de- 
liberately makes  it  so  by  adding  a  "starter,"  which  is 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  "nicely  soured  milk." 

In  the  Paris  bookstalls  we  bought  everything  we 
could  find  as  to  the  French  practices  in  this  respect,  and 
furthermore  we  spent  hours  in  the  Bibliotheque  Na- 
tionale  studying  the  documents  relating  to  it. 

D.  Allard,  Professeur  Departmental  d' Agriculture, 
says  in  his  book  "Le  Beurre" :  "It  is  generally  remarked 
that  ia  the  regions  which  produce  the  finest  and  best- 
liked  butter,  la  Normandie  and  la  Bretagne,  great  care 
is  taken  to  let  the  cream  turn  sour  before  it  is  churned. 
There  is  here  certainly  a  result  of  fermentation,  for  one 
can,  as  we  have  said,  impart  these  qualities  to  sweet 
cream  by  adding  select  ferments. 

"Besides  this,  fermentation  gives  another  advantage : 
it  makes  the  cream  easier  to  churn  and  increases  the 
yield  of  butter. 

"One  must  not  go  too  far,  however.     The  farmers 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         295 

know  very  well  that  the  cream  of  a  whole  week  gives 
a  butter  of  unpleasant  flavor. 

"It  is  therefore  the  uniformity  of  fermentation  that 
ensures  uniformity  in  the  production  of  butter;  which 
explains  the  importance  of  this  question." 

Another  writer,  V.  Houdet,  Ingenieur-Agronome, 
Directeur  de  I'Ecole  Nationale  des  Industries  Laitieres 
de  Mamirolle,  says  in  his  book  "Laiterie,  Beuerrerie, 
Fromagerie"  (fourth  edition,  1912) : 

"No  matter  whether  the  cream  has  been  obtained  by 
letting  the  milk  stand  in  a  low  temperature  or  by  means 
of  a  separator,  it  does  not,  if  churned  at  once,  yield 
anything  but  a  sweet  butter,  of  pure  taste  but  without 
bouquet  and  without  finesse. 

"In  order  that  the  butter  may  have  the  aroma,  and 
particularly  the  nutty  flavor  which  the  consumers  desire 
and  which  considerably  increases  its  market  value,  it  is 
necessary  that  the  cream  should  ferment,  should  be- 
come soured,  before  it  is  churned,  for  it  is  particularly 
on  this  treatment,  this  maturation  (ripening),  that  all 
the  qualities  of  the  product  depend. 

"While  the  cream  is  fermenting,  the  sugar  of  milk 
it  contains  is  changed  into  lactic  acid  which  reacts  in 
the  measure  of  its  production  on  the  glycerides,  sapon- 
ifies them  while  liberating  the  volatile  acids  which 
impart  to  the  butter  its  perfume  and  make  it  keep 
better. 

"At  the  same  time,  as  with  all  fermentation,  it  is 


296  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

necessary  to  stop  in  time;  an  excessive  development  of 
acid  would  yield  a  strong  butter,  rapidly  undergoing 
a  change  and  becoming  rancid." 

Director  Houdet  also  points  out,  as  did  Professor 
Allard,  that  by  souring  the  cream  the  yield  of  butter  is 
"very  appreciably  increased." 

Judging  by  these  remarks,  the  French  way  is  like  the 
American:  the  cream  is  ripened  (soured)  before  churn- 
ing. Must  we,  therefore,  conclude  that  the  enormous 
difference  (apart  from  the  salt  question)  between  the 
average  American  and  the  average  French  butter  is  due 
chiefly  to  American  carelessness  in  regard  to  a  number 
of  details,  particularly  the  degree  of  acidity  and  the  reg- 
ulation of  the  temperature  which  the  French  authors 
just  quoted  declare  to  be  of  the  utmost  importance  in 
the  manipulation  of  the  cream  while  ripening? 

Or  is  our  butter  usually  so  inferior  because  so  much 
of  it  is  marketed  after  undergoing  cold  storage,  whereas 
the  French  get  theirs  fresh,  as  they  do  their  poultry'? 
Years  ago  the  State  Railway  began  to  run  special  but- 
ter trains  from  Normandy,  Brittany,  and  the  La 
Rochelle  district,  which  reach  the  Paris  market  early 
in  the  morning,  refrigerating  cars  being  used  in  summer, 
so  that  the  butter  always  arrives  in  perfect  condition. 

Doubtless,  such  differences  help  to  explain  the  in- 
feriority of  our  butter;  but  a  question  of  even  greater 
importance  which  we  must  now  consider,  is  this :  Is  it 
true  that  the  best  butter  owes  its  fine  flavor  to  the 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        297 

ripening  of  the  cream — the  churning  of  sour  cream  in- 
stead of  sweet  ^ 

The  fact  that  dairymen  in  France  as  well  as  in  Amer- 
ica do  use  fermented  cream  does  not  necessarily  prove 
this  to  be  the  case;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  there  are  two 
other  very  important  reasons  for  ripening  the  cream: 
sour  cream  is  more  easily  churned^  and  it  yields  more 
butter  than  sweet  cream  does.  This  being  the  case^ 
most  dairymen^  being  human^  would  naturally  be 
tempted  to  use  acid  cream  even  if  it  were  possible  to 
make  a  still  finer  butter  with  absolutely  sweet  cream. 

That  this  is  possible,  is  the  belief  of  many  experts  and 
epicures.  A  German  lady  in  Berlin,  who  has  had  much 
experience,  informed  me  that  sweet-cream  butter  was 
in  that  region  preferred  by  those  who  could  indulge 
their  appetites  all  they  liked,  whereas  the  sour-cream 
butter  was  ordered  by  those  who  wished  to  curb  the 
appetites  of  their  customers  (in  taverns,  &c.).  An 
English  official,  Francis  Vacher,  remarks  in  "The  Food 
Inspector's  Handbook,"  in  which  he  gives  the  results  of 
his  experiences  in  sampling,  that  "it  seems  superfluous 
to  say  that  butter  of  fine  flavor  cannot  be  made  from 
sour  cream.  Yet  much  butter  is  made  from  sour 
cream,  particularly  in  small  farms  and  dairies." 

United  States  Government  and  State  officials  have 
given  much  attention  to  this  subtle  question.  While 
Edwin  H.  Webster,  Chief  of  Dairy  Division,  Bureau 
of  Animal   Industry,   attests,   as  we  have  seen,   that 


298  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

"practically  speaking,  all  butter  used  in  this  country  is 
churned  from  sour  cream,"  ^  the  Assistant  Chief, 
Harry  Hayward,^  admits  that  "but  a  very  small  per- 
centage of  all  dairy  butter  made  is  of  really  high 
grade."  Bulletins  18  and  21  of  the  Iowa  Agricultural 
Experimental  Station  contain  the  results  of  tests  made 
by  G.  E.  Patrick,  F.  A.  Leighton,  D.  B.  Bisbee  and  W. 
H.  Heilemann,  showing  that  butter  made  from  sweet 
cream  retains  its  flavor  better  than  butter  made  from 
sour  cream. 

In  June,  1909,  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry 
issued  Bulletin  114,  in  which  the  bacteriologist,  L.  A. 
Rogers,  and  the  chemist,  C.  E.  Gray,  give  the  results 
of  three  years'  study  of  this  problem.  They  found  that 
butter  made  from  ripened  (sour)  cream,  both  pasteur- 
ized and  unpasteurized,  develops,  in  storage,  fishy  and 
other  flavors  typical  of  storage  butter;  that  butter 
made  from  unripened,  unpasteurized  cream  always  de- 
veloped a  cheesy  or  rancid  flavor;  but  that  the  butter 
made  from  'pasteurized  cream  without  starter  usually 
retained  its  -flavor  with  little  or  no  change.  Even  at 
32°  F.,  where  all  the  ripened  butter  showed  decided 
changes,  the  sweet-cream  butter  deteriorated  very  lit- 
tle. Everything  showed  that  "some  factor  having  a 
deleterious  influence  on  the  butter  was  developed  with 

1  "Butter-making  on  the  Farm,"  Farmers'  Bulletin  No.  241. 

2  Facts  Concerning  the  History,  Commerce,  and  Manufacture  of 
Butter.  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry  No.  56.  Both  these  pamphlets 
contain  much  information  of  value  to  butter-makers. 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        299 

the  ripening  of  the  cream";  and  this  whether  the  acid 
developed  normally  in  the  cream  or  was  added  to  it,  as 
a  "starter."  Further:  "Butter  can  be  made  com- 
mercially from  sweet  pasteurized  cream  without  the 
addition  of  a  starter.  Fresh  butter  made  in  this  way 
has  a  flavor  too  mild  to  suit  the  average  dealer,  but  it 
changes  less  in  storage  than  butter  made  by  the  ordi- 
nary method,  and  can  be  sold  after  storage  as  high- 
grade  butter." 

Still  another  official  of  the  Department  of  Agricul- 
ture, L.  A.  Rogers,  bacteriologist  of  the  Dairy  Division, 
contributed  an  important  document  in  favor  of  sweet 
cream  butter.^ 

He  pointed  out  that  a  large  part  of  the  butter  made 
in  the  central  creameries  in  which  the  cream  is  received 
in  a  sour  or  otherwise  fermented  condition  develops  the 
peculiar  oily  flavor  of  mackerel  or  salmon.  After  a 
series  of  investigations  lasting  several  years  he  testified 
that  "in  all  cases  in  which  the  records  were  complete  it 
was  found  that  those  experimental  butters  which  be- 

1  Fishy  Flavor  in  Butter.  Circular  146,  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry, 
20  pages,  1909.  In  September,  1912,  the  Department  of  Agriculture 
published  another  document,  Bulletin  148  of  the  Bureau  of  Animal  In- 
dustry, by  L.  A.  Rogers,  S.  C.  Thompson,  and  J.  R.  Keithley,  in  which 
"the  superiority  of  butter  made  from  pasteurized  sweet  cream  is  again 
demonstrated"  in  making  butter  for  storage — for  which  most  American 
butter  at  present  is  made.  Attention  is  also  called  to  the  fact  that 
pasteurization  of  cream  serves  as  a  protection  to  the  health  of  the 
consumer  by  destroying  such  bacteria  as  those  of  tuberculosis  and 
typhoid  fever,  "which  are  known  to  survive  for  long  periods  in  butter 
made  from  unpasteurized  cream." 


300  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

came  fishy  were  made  from  high-acid  cream" ;  smd  that 
''fishy  flavor  may  be  prevented  with  certainty  by  mak- 
ing butter  from  pasteurized  sweet  cream." 

The  same  authority  informs  us  that  in  our  central 
creameries  "the  cream  is  usually  received  in  a  very  acid 
condition'' — surely  a  most  unfortunate  circumstance, 
inasmuch  as  the  experts,  including  the  French,  are,  as 
we  have  seen,  agreed  that  a  high  degree  of  acidity  spoils 
the  butter.  And  now  we  come  face  to  face  with  the 
all-important  question:  Does  a  low  degree  of  acidity 
really  improve  the  butter,  as  Professor  Allard  and  Di- 
rector Houdet  maintain  it  does'? 

In  other  words,  is  the  delicious  flavor  of  the  best  but- 
ter actually  due  to  the  lactic  acid  developed  by  the  ri- 
pening of  the  cream? 

Dairy  Chief  Webster  admits  that  "there  are  un- 
doubtedly desirable  -flavors  in  cream  that  do  not  come 
from  the  development  of  acid.  Just  what  these  are  is 
not  known  at  the  present  time,  but  the  rich  creamery 
flavor,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes  described,  the  nutty  flavor, 
of  a  fine  quality  of  cream  is  a  combination  of  acid  and 
other  flavors." 

The  "nutty"  flavor  is  found  particularly  in  May 
and  June  butter.  The  German  biologists,  H.  W. 
Conn  and  W.  M.  Esten,  who  made  careful  studies  of 
the  ripening  of  cream  which  they  published  in  Nos.  2 1 
and  22  of  the  "Centralblatt  fiir  Bakteriologie"  (1901) 
found  that  "the  peculiar  flavor  of  June  butter,  which 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY         301 

is  so  much  desired  by  the  butter-maker,  is  not  due  to 
the  development  of  the  common  lactic  bacteria." 

This  brings  us  back  to  Paris  and  the  Boeuf  a  la 
Mode.  It  was  in  May  that  we  found  the  butter  there 
so  very  delicious,  and  May  is  the  month  when  the  grass 
in  France  is  greenest,  juiciest,  richest  in  flavoring  pos- 
sibilities. After  collecting  a  large  amount  of  material 
relating  to  the  influence  of  food  in  varying  the  quality 
and  Flavors  of  meats  (which  will  be  presented  in  Chap- 
ter XII),  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  to  this 
rich  spring  food  that  the  nutty  flavor  is  chiefly  due. 

As  long  ago  as  the  middle  of  the  last  century  epicures 
guessed  what  made  the  Flavor  of  spring  butter  so  good. 
In  the  first  volume  of  his  Gastrophie,  Eugen  Baron 
Vaerst  declares  that  "mountain  butter  is  the  best. 
March  butter  is  particularly  good  because  of  the  grass 
fodder  the  cows  get.  Summer  butter  is  less  good,  were 
it  only  because  of  the  heat  and  the  annoyance  to  which 
the  animals  are  subj^ected  by  torturing  insects.  .  .  . 
Winter  butter  tastes  of  straw  and  other  winter  feed." 

The  assertion  that  mountain  butter  is  the  best,  re- 
minds me  of  an  episode  in  Bayreuth  where,  one  summer, 
the  family  that  gave  us  lodging  and  breakfast  had  the 
butter  brought  down  every  morning  fresh  from  the 
mountains  by  a  peasant  girl.  You  pay  in  Germany 
for  as  much  bread  and  butter  as  you  eat.  The  first  day 
we  ate  all  that  was  given  us  and  asked  for  double  the 
amount  next  morning,  and  once  more  double  that  for 


302  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

the  third  day.  It  was  as  good  and  sweet  and  tempting 
as  ice  cream.  The  incident  is  worth  mentioning  as  a 
hint  to  dealers  and  butter-makers  how  they  might 
quadruple  their  business  by  supplying  people  with  fresh 
butter,  unsalted  and  made  of  sweet  cream,  as  was  that 
Bayreuth  mountain  butter. 

In  future  discussions  of  this  subject  it  will  be  neces- 
sary to  make  It  clear  just  what  is  meant  by  sweet  cream 
and  sour  cream.  If,  as  the  two  German  bacteriologists 
referred  to  say,  there  are  some  acid  bacteria  present  in 
milk  as  it  is  drawn  from  the  cow,  then  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  absolutely  sweet  cream;  and,  chemically 
speaking,  the  cream  we  put  in  our  coffee  twelve  or 
twenty-four  hours  later  is  still  less  so.  But  fhysiolog- 
ically  speaking,  that  is  to  our  tongue,  such  cream  still  is 
sweet  and  remains  sweet  under  ordinary  atmospheric 
conditions  for  several  days;  that  is,  it  does  not  taste 
sour  and  does  not  clot  in  the  coffee  cup.  From  the 
physiological  point  of  view,  therefore,  the  cream  from 
which  the  best  butter  we  found  in  Paris  was  made  was 
sweet — absolutely  sweet  to  the  tongue,  whatever  the 
acidimeter  may  have  indicated. 

From  the  foregoing  remarks  any  dairyman  who 
wishes  to  get  rich  quick  can  gather  what  he  must  do. 
Another  point  must  be  borne  in  mind  in  making  butter 
which  is  not  to  be  eaten  at  once.  Bulletin  71  of  the 
Iowa  Experiment  Station  calls  attention  to  the  fact 
that  to  preserve  the  quality  (Flavor)  of  the  butter,  it 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        303 

is  not  enough  to  pasteurize  the  cream;  the  water  also 
must  have  its  germs  killed  by  being  heated  to  a  certain 
degree  and  then  cooled  again.  The  experiments  made 
showed  that  butter  made  from  pasteurized  cream  and 
washed  in  pasteurized  water  kept  normal  just  twice  as 
long  as  butter  made  from  unpasteurized  cream  and 
washed  with  unpasteurized  water,  even  though  well- 
water  was  used. 

CHEESE    AS    AN    APPETIZER. 

While  there  is  but  one  way  to  make  perfect  butter 
there  are  many  ways  to  make  perfect  cheese.  Butter  is 
always  butter,  varying  only  in  the  degree  of  palatabil- 
ity,  whereas  from  a  pail  of  milk  can  be  made  hundreds 
of  varieties  of  cheese,  each  perfect  in  its  way.  Every 
country  has  its  own,  differing  from  those  of  other  coun- 
tries and  provinces,  as  the  costumes  and  customs  differ. 
The  chief  difference  lies  in  the  Flavor,  and  this  is  due 
to  a  variety  of  causes,  one  of  them  being  the  source  of 
the  milk.  The  Laplander  makes  several  kinds  of 
cheese  from  reindeer  milk,  while  in  some  parts  of  Italy 
buffalo  cheese  is  eaten.  Goat  cheese  is  diversely  made 
in  Germany,  France,  Italy  and  other  countries,  while 
for  some  of  the  finest  cheeses,  including  genuine 
Roquefort,  sheep  supply  the  milk.  By  far  the  most  im- 
portant animal,  however,  is  the  cow. 

What  would  Europeans  and  Americans  do  without 
the  cow?     It  is  possible  to  get  along  without  her. 


304  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

When  I  visited  Japan,  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury ago,  the  first  experiments  in  the  production  of 
milk,  butter,  and  cheese  were  being  made  in  the 
Hokkaido,  with  a  herd  of  fifty  imported  cows.^  The 
courtesy  of  the  Governor-General  enabled  me  to  test 
the  products,  and  I  found  them  very  good.  But  owing 
to  scant  and  expensive  pasturage,  Japanese  epicures 
will  never  be  able  to  depend  much  on  cows;  and  think 
what  they  miss !  No  veal,  no  beef,  no  suet,  no  cream,  no 
butter,  no  cheese !  Think  of  the  endless  uses  we  make  of 
these,  alone,  or  in  thousands  of  culinary  combinations! 
Nevertheless,  we  still  have  much  to  learn  concern- 
ing the  diverse  uses  to  which  at  least  one  of  the  products 
of  the  protean  milk  pail  can  be  put.  We  make  above 
300,000,000  pounds  of  cheese  a  year,  worth  over 
$30,000,000 ;  but  there  is  less  to  boast  about  its  quality 
than  its  quantity.  We  are  strangely  monotonous  and 
unoriginal.  About  three-fourths  of  our  cheese  is  an 
imitation  of  the  English  Cheddar,  while  the  rest  con- 
sists mostly  of  imitations — generally  very  poor  ones — 
of  Swiss,  Dutch,  Italian,  or  German  cheeses,  or  the 
French  Camembert,  Roquefort,  and  so  on.  Have  we 
no  gastronomic  imagination?  Shall  we  permit  not 
only  the  epicures  but  the  peasants  of  Europe  to  look 
down  on  us  for  our  lack  of  it?  We  have,  to  be  sure,  a 
few  specialties,  such  as  the  Pineapple,  the  Brick,  Isigny, 
and  some  special  varieties  of  cream  cheese;  but  for  a 

1  See  the  details  in  the  chapter  on  "American  Sapporo,"  in  my  "Lotos 
Time  in  Japan." 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        305 

nation  of  nearly  a  hundred  millions,  we  make  a  very 
poor  showing  indeed  in  this  branch  of  gastronomy,  as 
in  so  many  others. 

To  a  patriotic  epicure  it  is  humiliating  to  peruse  Bul- 
letin 105  of  the  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry,  entitled 
Varieties  of  Cheese.  It  contains,  on  72  pages,  descrip- 
tions and  analyses  of  all  the  domestic  and  foreign 
cheeses  about  which  information  could  be  found  in  the 
literature  bearing  upon  the  subject.  The  authors  are 
C.  F.  Doane,  of  the  Dairy  Division,  and  H.  W.  Law- 
son,  of  the  Experiment  Stations.  The  number  of 
cheeses  described  by  them  is  242.  Of  these  63,  or 
more  than  a  fourth  of  the  whole  number,  are  French. 
Germany  follows  with  40,  and  England  comes  third 
with  24.  Switzerland  is  credited  with  20.  Italy 
contributes  19,  Austria  (with  Bohemia,  Hungary  and 
the  Tyrol)  17,  and  Holland  8.  These  are  the  leading 
cheese  producers. 

France,  as  was  to  be  expected  of  the  chief  gastro- 
nomic nation,  heads  the  list  in  the  matter  of  quality  as 
well  as  quantity.  Few  epicures  would  deny  that  the 
best  three  cheeses  made  anywhere  are  Camembert, 
Roquefort,  and  Brie.  Other  world-famed  kinds  are 
Pont-PEveque,  Neufchatel,  Mont  D'Or,  Gruyere,  Port 
du  Salut.  Among  the  less-known  kinds  are  some  which 
are  almost  if  not  quite  as  good  as  the  more  familiar 
varieties. 

A  pound  of  cheese  made  of  unskimmed  milk  has 


3o6  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

twice  the  nutritive  value  of  a  pound  of  beef.  It  is 
characteristic  of  the  gastronomic  French  people  that, 
notwithstanding  this  fact,  the  best  cheeses  made  by 
them,  for  themselves  and  the  rest  of  the  world,  are 
valued  and  intended  much  less  as  food  than  as  relishes, 
to  be  consumed  in  very  small  quantities. 

The  French  custom  of  using  cheese  as  an  appetizer, 
to  be  eaten  at  the  end  of  a  meal,  has  been  adopted  the 
world  over.  Usually  one  thinks  of  appetizers  (hors 
d'oeuvres)  as  being  served  at  or  near  the  beginning  of  a 
meal;  but  think  the  matter  over  and  you  will  see  that 
an  appetizer  is  even  more  useful  at  the  end,  as  a  harm- 
less stimulant  to  keep  up  a  steady  flow  of  saliva. 

It  is  not  a  mere  accident  that  the  three  favorite 
French  cheeses  are  those  that  have  the  most  piquant 
and  stimulating  Flavor.  This  Flavor  is  due  chiefly  to 
molds,  which  are  specially  cultivated  with  great  skill 
and  patience.  In  Camembert  and  Brie  the  mold  is  on 
the  rind  and  gradually  works  its  way  in,  till  the  whole 
is  permeated  by  it.  In  Roquefort  the  rind  is  clean  of 
mold,  which  is  started  and  developed  in  the  inside. 

Besides  these  molds,  which,  of  course,  differ  in  the 
several  varieties,  there  are  other  sources  of  Flavor,  such 
as  the  salt  added  to  the  curd,  certain  fatty  acids,  and 
ammonia-like  bodies,  these  being  particularly  notice- 
able in  well-ripened  Camembert;  but  what  chiefly  de- 
termines the  characteristic  Flavor  of  these  cheeses  is 
their  private  and  particular  kinds  of  mold. 


FRENCH     SUPREMACY        307 

Perhaps  some  day  the  French  will  erect  a  statue  to 
Flavor  in  Food.  To  the  many  illustrations  given  in 
these  pages  of  the  intelligence  they  exercise  and  the 
trouble  they  take  to  secure  it,  let  me  add  one  more — 
the  making  of  Roquefort  cheese. 

We  need  not  dwell  on  the  first  stages  of  the  process, 
the  heating  and  cooling  of  the  milk,  the  adding  of  the 
rennet  at  a  certain  temperature  to  curdle  it,  and  so  on, 
as  these  do  not  differ  materially  from  the  ways  of  mak- 
ing other  cheeses.  Sheep's  milk  is  used  for  the  genuine 
article,  but  Roquefort  made  elsewhere  of  cow's  milk  is 
so  similar  in  taste  to  the  original  article  that  no  doubt 
remains  as  to  the  all-importance  of  the  mold. 

This  mold  is  secured  by  making  bread  of  wheat  and 
barley  flour  to  which  have  been  added  whey  and  a  little 
vinegar.  This  bread  is  kept  in  a  moist  place  for  a 
month  or  longer  till  it  has  become  moldy  through  and 
through.  Then  the  crust  is  removed  and  the  moldy 
crumbs  are  placed  between  layers  of  the  cheese  curd. 

The  romantic  part  of  the  story  now  begins.  In  the 
neighborhood  of  the  town  of  Roquefort  there  are  many 
grottoes,  or  natural  caverns,  steadily  ventilated  by  a 
cool,  moist  current  of  air.  Into  these  the  cheese  is  taken 
for  the  ripening  process.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  salt- 
ing and  scraping  to  prevent  the  mold  from  growing  on 
the  rind.  To  favor  its  development  in  the  inside, 
fresh  air  is  provided  by  piercing  the  cheese  with  ma- 
chinery having  up  to  a  hundred  fine  needles.     Thus  it 


3o8  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

gradually  acquires  its  green  marbling  and  the 
piquancy  which  makes  the  epicure's  mouth  water. 

Roquefort  cheese  has  been  famous  for  over  two  thou- 
sand years.  The  ancient  Romans  were  very  fond  of  it, 
as  Pliny  relates,  and  imported  it  in  large  quantities. 
The  demand  increased  from  century  to  century,  until 
half  a  million  sheep  were  required  to  supply  the  de- 
mand and  four  hundred  factories  were  kept  busy.  To- 
day, enormous  quantities  of  imitation  Roquefort  are 
made  in  various  countries.  Some  of  it  is  quite  tasty, 
but  epicures  will  continue  to  ask  for  the  original,  and 
it  is  right  that  the  law  should  protect  them  and  the 
makers  by  compelling  imitators  to  put  "Roquefort 
Type"  on  their  labels. 

To  a  good  many  persons  the  piquancy  of  Roquefort 
does  not  appeal.  Few,  however,  fail  to  succumb  to 
the  wiles  of  Camembert.  Its  popularity  is  attested  by 
the  fact  that  New  York  hotels  alone  use  30,000  of 
these  cheeses  a  week  during  the  season.  There  is  a 
demand  at  present  for  about  4,000,000  Camemberts 
from  the  United  States  alone,  and  sometimes  Caen  and 
Havre  are  unable  to  supply  the  demand.  Many  at- 
tempts to  manufacture  Camembert  have  been  made 
in  America.  The  president  of  one  of  the  largest  pure 
food  companies  told  me  he  had  spent  $30,000  in  the 
attempt  to  produce  a  satisfactory  Camembert;  then  he 
gave  it  up  and  began  to  import  it.  You  can  import 
cheeses  but  you  cannot  import  or  reproduce  local  flavors. 


VIII 


EPICUREAN  ITALY 


THE    CRADLE    OF    MODERN    COOKERY. 

HE  fact  that  Roquefort  cheese 
was  relished  by  Roman  epicures 
twenty  centuries  ago  indicates 
that  French  gastronomy  is  not 
entirely  a  product  of  modern 
times.  Yet  it  was  not  till  the 
reign  of  Louis  XIV  (who  died 
in  1643  that  France  began  to 
lead  the  world  in  this  branch  of  civilization.  The 
cradle  of  modern  culinary  art  was  Italy.  Katharine 
of  Medici  brought  its  higher  branches  from  that  coun- 
try, which,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  was  supreme  in  all 
the  fine  arts,  the  chef's  included. 

Italian  cookery  differed  in  those  days  from  that  of 

other  countries  as  French  cookery,  with  its  entremets, 

309 


310  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

ragouts,  and  salmis,  its  diverse  light  viands  and  deli- 
cacies differed  in  latter  centuries  from  that  of  other 
parts  of  the  world.  What  gave  the  Italian  cooks  their 
supremacy  was  that  they  were  alive  to  the  importance 
of  Flavor.  Montaigne  expressed  admiration  of  these 
same  cooks  "who  can  so  curiously  temper  and  season 
strange  odors  with  the  savor  and  relish  of  their  meats." 

Is  it  a  wonder  that  the  reform  was  hailed  with  de- 
light, Voltaire  going  so  far  as  to  exclaim :  Un  cuisinier 
est  un  etre  divin? 

Venice  was  the  gate  by  which  Oriental  luxuries  en- 
tered Italy.  At  the  same  time  there  were  culinary 
traditions  which  came  to  the  Italians  of  the  Middle 
Ages  direct  from  their  own  ancestors.  Sicilian  cooks 
were  favored  by  the  ancient  Romans  just  as  French 
chefs  are  in  modern  Europe.  Among  the  Greeks,  also, 
the  cooks  from  Sicily  were  in  great  demand,  and 
Sicilian  cookery  was  proverbially  good.  The  Careme 
of  his  time  was  the  Sicilian  Archestratus,  who,  we  read, 
"traveled  far  and  wide  in  quest  of  alimentary  dainties 
of  different  lands,"  and  who,  some  2250  years  ago, 
wrote  a  long  poem  on  gastronomy. 

Three  centuries  ago  Burton  referred  to  the  fondness 
of  the  Italians  for  frogs  and  snails,  two  delicacies  now 
universally  associated  with  Gallic  epicureanism.  The 
French,  to  be  sure,  have  by  their  special  care  in  the 
rearing  of  these  creatures  (there  are  books  on  the  sub- 
ject) made  them  peculiarly  their  own. 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  311 

Though  now  playing  second  fiddle  to  France,  the 
Italians  are  still  holding  their  own  among  the  leading 
gastronomic  nations.  They  have  plenty  of  reasons 
for  liking  their  own  cooking,  nor  are  they  alone  in  en- 
joying it.  In  New  York  and  other  American  cities 
Italian  restaurants  are  always  well  patronized  and  not 
only  by  Italians,  and  the  same  is  true  in  London,  and  to 
some  extent  in  Paris. 

Let  us  briefly  pass  in  review  the  most  desirable  foods 
and  dishes  of  the  Italians  to  see  what  we  can  learn 
from  them. 

OLIVE   OIL   AND   SARDINES. 

Col.  Newnham-Davis  declares  that  "really  good  pure 
olive  oil  is  almost  unknown  outside  the  boundaries  of 
Italy.  An  Italian  gentleman  never  eats  salad  when 
traveling  in  foreign  countries,  for  his  palate,  used  to 
the  finest  oils,  revolts  against  the  liquid  fit  only  for  the 
lubrication  of  machinery  he  so  often  is  offered  in  Ger- 
many, England,  and  France." 

This  is  somewhat  misleading.  While  inferior  or 
adulterated  olive  oil  is  certainly  served  in  many  other- 
^^ise  respectable  European  restaurants,  even  in  Paris, 
I  have  eaten  delicious  olive  oil  made  in  France.  Span- 
ish oil  usually  has  a  flavor  too  strong  for  most  of  us, 
but  when  it  is  carefully  refined  this  is  not  the  case. 
In  Lyons  I  was  once  the  guest  of  a  family  of  epicures 
who  preferred   Spanish  oil   to  any  other,   and  their 


312  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

salads  certainly  were  delicious.  But,  on  the  whole, 
the  finest  olive  oil  comes  from  Italy. 

The  superiority  is  purely  a  question  of  Flavor,  for 
all  olive  and  other  table  oils  have  the  same  food  value. 

Many  factors  combine  to  make  Lucca  and  other 
Italian  olive  oils  so  pleasing  to  the  palate.  The  soil  is 
specially  adapted  to  the  cultivation  of  the  olive  tree, 
and  care  has  been  taken  to  select  the  best  varieties. 
The  old  Roman  epicures,  who  gathered  their  delicacies 
from  all  parts  of  the  world,  already  preferred  Italian 
olive  oil,  especially  that  of  the  variety  known  as  the 
Licinian  and  grown  in  Campania. 

No  less  important  than  soil  and  variety  is  the  proper 
harvesting  of  the  crop.  In  Asia,  as  well  as  in  Greece 
and  in  many  parts  of  Spain,  much  of  the  oil  produced 
owes  its  inferior  quality  to  the  fact  that  the  olives  are 
knocked  off  the  trees  with  poles  or  shaken  off.  The 
Italians  who  make  the  best  oil  pick  the  olives  by  hand 
and  deliver  them  at  the  mills  without  bruises. 

These  same  Italians  subject  the  olives  to  four  suc- 
cessive pressings.  The  oil  from  the  first,  known  as 
virgin  oil,  is  the  finest,  and  as  it  is  also  the  most  ex- 
pensive, unscrupulous  dealers  may  and  do  sell  the  yield 
of  the  following  and  increasingly  inferior  pressings 
under  that  name.  Eternal  vigilance  is  everywhere  the 
price  of  getting  pure  food  and  the  best  of  it. 

There  is  food  for  thought  in  the  official  information 
that  Spain  exports  large  amounts  of  olive  oil  to  France 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  313 

and  Italy  and  that  the  greater  part  of  this  is  reexported 
from  those  countries,  largely  in  the  form  of  mixed 
oil.  In  1911  Spain  exported  90,419,723  pounds  of 
olive  oil,  valued  at  $7,397,977-     . 

Much  good  has  no  doubt  been  done  by  the  Italian 
Society  of  Permanent  Chemical  Inspection,  for  the 
analysis  of  food  products  and  official  certification  of 
purity.  The  honest  grower  of  and  dealer  in  olive  oil 
suffers  much  from  the  competition  of  the  cheap  oils. 

In  the  interest  of  honesty  a  law  was  passed  in  Spain 
in  1892  providing  that  all  cottonseed  or  rapeseed  oil 
imported  into  that  country  must  be  denatured  by  the 
addition  of  1 J  per  cent,  of  wood  tar  or  petroleum  and 
also  that  all  imported  olive  oil  found  to  contain  cotton- 
seed oil  or  other  similar  products  shall  be  rendered 
unfit  for  consumption  in  the  same  manner. 

The  dangerous  nature  of  the  competition  to  which 
the  olive  grower  is  exposed  is  illustrated  by  a  remark 
made  by  commercial  agent,  Julian  Erode,  in  the  Con- 
sular and  Trade  Reports  (August  29,  1910.)  Writ- 
ing from  Alexandria  he  says:  "The  natives,  most  of 
whom  are  Mohammedans  and  large  oil  consumers, 
have  been  educated  to  substitute  cottonseed  oil  for  the 
olive  oil  they  formerly  used,  and  the  latter  is  now 
found  only  in  the  houses  of  the  wealthy.  The  change, 
which  has  taken  place  in  Egypt,  and  which  is  now 
taking  place  to  a  great  extent  in  Turkey,  can  likewise 
be  made  in  Tripoli,  Tunis,  Algeria,  Morocco,  and  other 


314  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

Mohammedan  countries  if  proper  efforts  are  put  forth." 

Bearing  in  mind  the  remarks  in  a  preceding  chapter 
regarding  cotton  seed  oil  the  word  "educated"  in  the 
above  quotation  is  painfully  sarcastic.  It  is  purse 
versus  palate,  cheapness  versus  Flavor,  which  remains 
for  the  wealthy  alone  to  enjoy  and  get  the  benefit  of. 

It  is  in  the  sardine  industry,  however,  that  olive  oil 
is  fighting  its  hardest  battles.  The  oil  in  a  box  of 
sardines  costs,  if  genuine,  more  than  the  fish  in  it. 
Consequently,  efforts  are  being  made  to  substitute 
cheaper  oils.  From  regions  where  sardines  are  canned 
in  wholesale  quantities  come  reports  of  annually  de- 
creasing imports  of  olive  oil,  with  a  corresponding  in- 
crease in  the  imports  of  cheaper  oils.  Were  it  not  for 
the  public's  "prejudice"  in  favor  of  Flavor  in  oil,  the 
olive  would  doubtless  be  kicked  out  altogether.  I  have 
read  in  a  consular  report  that  "cottonseed  oil  has  been 
selling  about  fifty  per  cent,  cheaper  than  the  olive  oil 
used  in  packing.  This  saving,  the  packers  say,  would 
be  given  to  purchasers  of  their  goods." 

The  dear,  generous,  philanthropic  packers!  To 
think  that  it  is  not  for  their  own  sake  but  to  help  the 
consumers  that  they  are  so  very  anxious  to  give  up 
olive  oil,  and  to  persuade  the  Government  not  to  make 
them  state  on  the  label  what  kind  of  oil  they  use! 

They  point  out — disinterestedly,  of  course! — that 
cottonseed  oil  is  "claimed  to  be  physically  as  pure  as 
olive  oil,  just  as  digestible,  and  even  a  better  preserva- 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  315 

tive."  The  question,  therefore,  "is  simply  up  to  the 
manufacturers  of  cottonseed  oil  to  educate  the  public 
to  these  facts  and  destroy  the  prejudice  against  their 
product." 

In  England,  in  the  summer  of  1912,  a  different  kind 
of  education  was  carried  on  by  the  importers  of  a  special 
brand  of  sardines.  In  big  advertisements  the  public 
was  informed  that  a  sardine  is  not  necessarily  a  pilchard 
but  may  be  the  chinchard,  the  herring  or  the  small 
mackerel,  or  the  brisling  which  fattens  on  the  small 
shellfish  of  the  Norwegian  fjords.  All  of  these  be- 
come sardines  only  when  they  are  cured.  The  flavor 
depends  in  part  on  the  kind  of  fish  canned,  the  food 
they  eat,  the  time  of  the  year  they  are  caught  and,  in 
part,  on  the  way  they  are  cured.  For  the  better 
grades  olive  oil  is  used,  but  for  the  cheaper  class  trade 
coarse  olive  oil  is  taken,  or  cottonseed  or  peanut  oil. 
Of  olive  oil  there  are  fourteen  grades  and  the  best  of 
these  is  the  right  kind  if  you  want  the  best  sardines. 

Here  were  interesting  things  for  British  sardine  buy- 
ers to  ponder.  They  were  thus  warned  not  to  continue 
to  ask  the  grocer  simply  for  sardines,  but  for  sardines  of 
a  particular  kind  put  up  by  a  reputable  firm.  If  the 
firm  which  boasted  that  it  used  the  best  fish  and  the 
best  of  the  fourteen  grades  of  olive  oil  has  a  wise  head 
it  will  live  up  to  its  claims.  In  such  things  honesty  is 
by  far  the  best  policy — in  the  long  run. 

Smoked  sardines  are  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  good  as 


3i6  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

those  simply  packed  in  olive  oil.  They  are  usually 
marketed  as  Kieler  Sprotten  and  should  be  better 
known  in  this  country. 

FRIED  FISH  AND  FRITTA   MISTA. 

Doubtless  the  word  sardine  comes  from  the  Italian 
island,  Sardinia,  around  which  the  small  fish  used  for 
canning  abound. 

Small  fish  of  various  other  kinds  are  a  favorite 
article  of  diet  all  over  Italy.  In  Venice,  for  instance, 
among  the  most  characteristic  sights  are  the  numerous 
little  shops  in  which  piles  of  fried  fish  are  exposed  for 
sale  inside  the  open  window,  if  window  there  be. 
They  are  eaten  with  slices  of  polenta,  or  thick  corn 
meal  mush,  cut  off  with  a  thread  from  a  huge  loaf. 
The  gondolier,  as  he  passes  by,  exchanges  his  penny 
for  some  of  this  food  and  departs  munching  it  with 
evidence  of  perfect  satisfaction. 

The  oil  used  for  frying  these  little  fishes  is  not,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  the  virgin  oil  of  the  month  of  May. 
But  it  is  infinitely  better  than  the  "cooking-butter" 
sent  to  the  kitchens  of  thousands  of  wealthy  Americans. 
It  is  more  economical,  too,  than  our  frying  baths. 
When  the  French  composer  Massenet,  a  noted  gourmet, 
visited  Italy  for  the  first  time,  he  enjoyed  a  meal  con- 
sisting of  "an  excellent  snail  soup  and  fish  fried  in 
oil  which  must  have  done  service  in  the  kitchen  at  least 
two  or  three  years." 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  317 

It  is  acknowledged  by  epicures  of  all  lands  that  in 
the  art  of  frying,  the  Italian  cook  ranks  supreme.  In 
the  more  expensive  eating  houses  butter  (not  "cooking 
butter")  is  often  used,  but  the  national  way  is  to  fry 
in  oil,  and  when  the  oil  is  prime  the  result  is  delicious. 
An  American  girl,  who  married  an  Italian,  writes  to  me 
from  the  Riviera  Ligure :  "Oil  is  used  for  frying,  and  it 
seems  to  me  everything  is  fried — even  green  vegetables 
get  a  bath  of  hot  oil.  When  butter  is  used  it  is  for  a 
condiment." 

Fried  food  in  England  and  America  is  usually  greasy 
and  indigestible  because  the  cook  does  not  understood 
that  a  deep  frying-kettle  is  best,  that  the  oil  (or  what- 
ever liquid  is  used)  must  at  the  start  have  a  tempera- 
ture of  nearly  500°  Fahrenheit,  so  that  a  thin  film  may 
form  immediately  over  the  outside  of  whatever  is  to  be 
fried,  thus  keeping  in  all  the  juices  and  flavors;  and  that 
whatever  oil  may  adhere  to  the  food  after  it  is  fished 
out  must  be  allowed  at  once  to  drain  off  on  a  napkin 
or  otherwise.  The  Italian  cooks  seem  to  know  all 
these  things  instinctively,  the  result  being  that  their 
fried  foods  come  up  to  the  test  given  by  Mary  Ronald, 
who  remarks  in  the  Century  Cook  Book  that  properly 
fried  Saratogo  chips  can  be  eaten  out  of  hand  without 
soiling  one's  gloves. 

Yritta  mista  is  one  of  the  chefs  d'oeuvre  of  the 
Italian  cook.  The  first  time  I  ate  one  was  m  Rome. 
We  went  to  a  little  restaurant  marked  in  Baedeker 


3i8  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

with  a  star.  After  eating  the  mixed  fry  containing 
sweetbreads,  shredded  artichoke  bottoms,  brains,  cocks- 
combs, truffles  and  other  delicacies,  done  to  a  turn,  we 
decided  that  the  restaurant  deserved  two  stars. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  favorite  fritta  mista  con- 
sists largely  of  things  that  Americans  have  only  re- 
cently learned  to  use  or  still  despise.  The  value  of 
sweetbreads,  which  used  to  be  thrown  away,  has  been 
discovered — they  are  now  almost  worth  their  weight 
in  radium.  Brains  would  be  equally  relished  by  nine 
Americans  out  of  ten — if  not  by  all — if  they  would 
taste  them  fried  as  served  to  me  on  August  22,  1912, 
at  Como.  I  give  the  date  because  it  was  a  memorable 
gastronomic  event. 

The  Italians  are  like  the  French  in  relishing  these 
"trimmings."  Mary  Ronald  relates  an  amusing  story 
of  a  French  family  who  moved  into  one  of  our  West- 
ern towns  where  calves'  heads,  livers,  brains  and  sweet- 
breads were  still  undiscovered  luxuries.  They  wrote 
home  that  the  price  of  living  there  was  nominal  be- 
cause the  foods  which  they  most  prized  were  given 
away  by  the  butchers  as  food  for  dogs. 

Many  years  ago  Sir  Henry  Thompson  tried  to  per- 
suade the  British  to  substitute  olive  oil  for  lard.  His 
advice  affords  at  the  same  time  an  amusing  glimpse  of 
a  certain  culinary  custom:  "Excellent  and  fresh  olive 
oil,  which  need  not  be  so  perfect  in  tint  and  flavor  as 
the  choicest  kinds  reserved  for  the  salad  bowl,  is  the 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  319 

best  available  form  of  fat  for  frying,  and  is  sold  at  a 
moderate  price  by  the  gallon  for  this  purpose  at  the 
best  Italian  warehouses.  Nothing,  perhaps,  is  better 
than  clarified  beef  dripping,  such  as  is  produced,  often 
abundantly,  in  every  English  kitchen;  but  the  time- 
honored  traditions  of  our  perquisite  system  enable  any 
English  cook  to  sell  this  for  herself,  at  small  price,  to 
a  little  trader  round  the  corner,  while  she  buys,  at  her 
employer's  cost,  a  quantity  of  pork  lard  for  frying 
material,  at  double  the  price  obtained  for  the  dripping. 
Lard  is,  moreover,  the  worst  menstruum  for  the  pur- 
pose, the  most  difficult  to  work  in  so  far  as  to  free  the 
matters  fried  in  it  from  grease;  and  we  might  be  glad 
to  buy  back  our  own  dripping  from  the  aforesaid  little 
trader  at  a  profit  to  him  of  cent  per  cent,  if  only  the 
purchase  could  be  diplomatically  negotiated." 

MACARONI  THE  REAL  STAFF  OF  LIFE. 

Next  to  olive  oil  the  best  edible  thing  Italy  gives  to 
the  world  is  macaroni  in  its  many  varieties.  We  im- 
port more  than  four  million  dollars'  worth  of  it  yearly, 
and  we  have  learned,  by  raising  durum  wheat,  to  make 
a  fair  imitation  of  the  products  of  a  Gragnano  factory ; 
but  most  of  all  this  is  probably  eaten  by  the  Italians 
who  have  come  to  live  with  us. 

In  the  average  American  household  macaroni  is  far 
too  seldom  served.  In  one  of  its  varieties,  it  might 
advantageously  replace  potatoes  served  at  one  at  least 


320  FOOD     AND     FLAVOR 

of  our  three  daily  meals.  Just  why  we  should  have 
potatoes  served  at  every  meal  I  have  never  been  able 
to  understand.  Most  desirable  substitutes,  besides 
macaroni,  are  boiled  chestnuts,  rice  and  hominy,  the 
rice  and  hominy  being  particularly  good  when  fried. 
Not  that  I  would  say  a  word  against  potatoes.  Baked, 
fried,  boiled,  steamed,  mashed,  hashed  and  browned 
or  with  cream — in  all  these  and  many  other  ways  they 
are  good,  and  it  would  be  a  calamity  to  be  deprived  of 
them  because  they  not  only  make  an  excellent  accom- 
paniment to  other  foods,  especially  to  meats,  but 
are  also  most  tasty  when  served  as  a  separate  course, 
in  the  French  style.  But  enough  is  as  good  as  a  feast. 
What  we  need  is  variety;  and  sometimes,  when  we 
have  to  economize  on  meat,  we  need  something  more 
nutritious  than  potatoes. 

Potatoes  impose  much  work  on  the  kidneys,  where- 
fore those  afflicted  with  rheumatism  should  avoid  them. 
Besides,  macaroni  has  many  times  the  value  of  potatoes 
as  a  flesh  former.  It  owes  this  value  to  the  large 
amount  of  gluten  in  it,  the  potato  being  useful  chiefly 
as  a  heat-producer. 

Gluten  is  a  word  the  meaning  of  which  everybody 
should  know. 

When  wheat  flour  is  kneaded  in  a  current  of  water 
most  of  the  starch  is  removed  and  there  remains  a 
sticky  substance  which  is  called  gluten.  It  is  the 
nitrogenous,  or  flesh-building,  part  of  the  flour.     In  or- 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  321 

dinary  wheat  flour  there  is  enough  of  this  gluten  to 
make  the  dough  cohere  and  to  give  the  bread  a  food 
value  apart  from  that  coming  from  the  large  percentage 
of  starch  in  it  which  is  a  heat-producer.  In  macaroni 
wheat  there  is  a  smaller  percentage  of  starch  and  a 
much  larger  percentage  of  gluten.  Genuine  macaroni 
which  is  made  of  the  best  durum  wheat  flour  has  nearly 
twice  the  amount  of  gluten  as  the  highest  grade  wheat 
flour. 

Bread  is  generally  called  "the  staff  of  life,"  but  in 
Italy  macaroni  is  the  staff  of  life,  and  it  has  a  much 
better  title  to  this  designation  than  bread  because  it 
contains  so  much  more  of  the  body-building  gluten. 

"Gluten  is  to  wheat  what  lean  is  to  meat,"  as  Charles 
Cristodoro  has  tersely  put  it.  "When  you  think,"  he 
writes,  "of  macaroni  flour,  it  is  like  going  to  the 
butcher  and  buying  a  roast  and  getting  less  bone,  less 
gristle,  and  less  fat,  but  about  twice  as  much  lean  for 
the  money.  A  butcher  who  would  give  his  customers 
twice  as  much  lean  meat  as  another  butcher  would  get 
all  the  trade  in  the  neighborhood." 

In  other  words,  macaroni  is  both  bread  and  meat. 
It  is  not  merely  a  side-dish,  as  many  American  and 
English  housewives  fancy,  but  a  complete  meal  in 
itself,  although,  owing  to  the  mildness  of  its  Flavor, 
it  is  generally  relished  more  when  cooked  with  to- 
matoes, or  a  little  chopped  meat,  or,  better  still,  some 
cheese  or  butter  or  both,  because,  like  bread,  macaroni 


Macaroni    Drying 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  323 

is  deficient  in  fat,  some  of  which  it  needs  to  make  a 
dish  well  balanced  as  to  nutritive  ingredients. 

For  lunch  there  is  perhaps  nothing  quite  so  desirable 
as  a  dish  of  marcaroni  thus  prepared.  At  present  it  is 
difficult  to  get  such  a  dish  properly  cooked,  except  in 
our  Italian  and  French  restaurants.  But  I  believe  the 
time  will  come  when  every  American  and  English  busi- 
ness man  and  woman  will  have  a  chance  to  eat  an 
appetizing  and  easily  digestible  lunch  in  a  macaroni 
cook-shop. 

This  point  seems  of  such  great  importance  that  I 
shall  emphasize  it  by  citing  Sir  Henry  Thompson's 
advice. 

"Weight  for  weight,  macaroni  may  be  regarded  as 
not  less  valuable  for  flesh-making  purposes,  in  the  ani- 
mal economy,  than  beef  and  mutton.  Most  people 
can  digest  it  more  easily  and  rapidly  than  meat;  it 
offers,  therefore,  an  admirable  substitute  for  meat,  par- 
ticularly for  luncb  or  mid-day  meals,  among  those 
whose  employments  demand  continuous  attention  dur- 
ing the  whole  of  a  long  afternoon.  To  dine,  or  eat 
a  heavy  meal  in  the  middle  of  the  day  is,  for  busy  men, 
a  great  mistake:  one  nevertheless  which  is  extremely 
common,  and  productive  of  great  discomfort,  to  say 
the  least." 

Macaroni  might,  this  eminent  dietician  suggests,  be 
prepared  at  the  restaurants  "as  a  staple  dish,  in  two 
or  three  forms,  since  it  sustains  the  power  without  tax- 


324  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

ing  too  much  the  digestion,  or  rendering  the  individual 
heavy,  sleepy,  and  incompetent  afterwards." 

All  these  remarks  refer  to  macaroni  generically — the 
whole  marcaroni  family,  which  is  a  big  one.  Its  best 
known  members  are  spaghetti,  and  vermicelli;  but 
there  are  many  others  equally  good  and  known  only  to 
Italians.  Among  these  are  fidelini^  stellete^  tagliarinU 
lasagnetti^  and  many  others.  Altogether,  I  am  told, 
there  are  about  fifty  varieties  of  pasta — which  is  the 
generic  name  for  all  of  them. 

The  most  delicately  and  deliciously  flavored  of  them 
all  is  tagliatelli^  but  it  is  hard  to  get.  Beware  of  sub- 
stitutions ! 

"Subitol  Subito!"  exclaimed  the  waiter  at  the 
Vapore  restaurant  in  Venice  when,  for  the  first  time, 
I  had  ordered  this — to  me — unknown  dish  and  finally 
asked  him  why  he  did  not  bring  it.  He  had  gone  out 
specially  to  buy  some  fresh  butter  to  cook  it  with,  and 
when  it  came  on  the  table — tagliatelU  al  burro — it  was 
a  feast  for  the  gods.  If  you  gave  me  the  choice,  at 
your  expense,  of  all  the  dishes  on  the  elaborate  lunch 
bill  of  fare  of  the  most  expensive  New  York  restaurant 
and  tagliatelU  al  burro  was  one  of  them,  tagliatelli 
with  butter  I  would  order. 

There  is  also  such  a  thing  as  gluten  bread,  made  for 
persons  of  weak  digestion  or  troubled  with  diabetes; 
but  it  is  said  that  one  tires  of  this. 

No  one  ever  tires  of  the  macaronis.     I  could  eat 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  325 

a  dish  of  them  three  times  a  day  and  smack  my  lips 
after  each. 

To  be  sure,  there  is  macaroni  and  macaroni.  An 
Italian  can  tell  the  genuine  by  its  smoothness,  its  clear 
yellow  color,  its  hornlike  toughness  and  general  glu- 
tinous aspect.  The  genuine  is  not  necessarily  im- 
ported; a  good  brand  is,  as  I  have  said,  made  in 
America  of  real  durum  wheat;  but  in  this,  as  in  all 
other  things,  eternal  vigilance  is  called  for;  the  world  is 
full  of  gay  deceivers.  Macaroni  made  of  ordinary 
wheat  flour  is  poor  stuff,  but  fortunately  it  is  easily 
distinguished  from  the  real  thing.  Being  deficient  in 
sticky  gluten,  it  is  not  able,  when  it  is  subjected  to  the 
drying  process,  to  bear  its  own  weight  and  is  therefore 
laid  out  flat  instead  of  being  "poled" — that  is,  thrown 
over  reed  poles  on  which  it  is  exposed  first  to  sunlight 
and  then  to  damp  cellars  and  shaded  storehouses. 
Therefore,  to  get  the  real  Italian  Flavor,  look  for  the 
flattened  pole  marks  at  the  bend  in  the  end  of  the 
macaroni. 

While  macaroni  is  the  national  dish  of  Italy,  it  is  as 
great  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  all  Italians  eat  it  three 
times  a  day,  as  it  is  to  think  that  rice  is  the  daily  diet 
of  all  Japanese.  Rice,  in  Japan,  is  a  luxury  to  be  served 
in  the  poorer  families  only  on  holidays,  or  in  case  of 
illness.  Professor  Chamberlain  relates  in  his  Things 
Japanese  that  he  once  heard  a  beldame  in  a  village  re- 
mark to  another  with  a  grave  shake  of  the  head,  "What ! 


326  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

Do  you  mean  to  say  that  it  has  come  to  having  to  give 
her  rice*?"  the  inference  being  that  the  case  must  be 
alarming  indeed  if  the  family  had  thought  it  necessary 
to  resort  to  so  expensive  a  dainty. 

In  the  same  way  it  has  been  said  about  Italians  that 
it  is  as  accurate  to  assert  they  live  on  macaroni,  as  to 
assert  that  Americans  live  on  turkey.  Some  do,  many 
don't. 

When  I  arrived  in  Japan,  some  of  the  geishas  were 
convulsed  with  laughter  over  my  clumsy  efforts  to  eat 
with  chopsticks.  I  found  it  a  good  deal  like  fishing— 
never  knew  when  I'd  get  the  next  bite.  Macaroni 
eating  is  less  difficult  to  the  inexperienced,  yet  many 
Americans  seem  to  be  in  doubt  as  to  how  it  should  be 
done.  (Maybe  that  is  one  reason  why  it  is  not  served 
as  often  as  it  should  be.)  The  approved  Italian  way 
is  to  gently  spear  a  stick  of  it  with  the  fork,  convey  the 
end  to  the  mouth,  and  suck  it  in  without  much  waste 
of  time.  An  American  observer  was  so  impressed  by 
this  process  that  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
Italians  have  reels  in  their  throats. 

Another  way  is  to  wind  the  paste  round  your  fork 
till  there  is  a  wad  that  just  fits  your  mouth.  But  there 
is  no  loss  of  Flavor  if  the  macaroni  is  cut  into  con- 
venient pieces  and  eaten  ad  libitum  any  way  you  please. 

The  most  astonishing  sight  I  witnessed  during  my 
seven  visits  to  Italy  was  at  Naples.  We  had  hired  a 
cab  in  front  of  the  hotel  and  told  the  driver  we  wanted 


EPICUREAN     ITALY  327 

to  see  the  people  enjoying  their  open  air  life.  He  took 
us  to  a  street  where  everything,  including  cooking  and 
eating,  was  done  outside  the  houses.  Presently  he 
stopped  at  a  place  where  macaroni  was  being  cooked  in 
a  huge  kettle.  A  beggar  ran  up  and  offered  to  eat 
some  right  out  of  the  boiling  water  if  we  would  pay 
for  it.  The  cook  ladled  a  huge  portion  into  a  tin 
basin  and  the  man  swallowed  it  all  in  a  few  seconds, 
steaming  hot.  His  stomach  must  have  been  lined  with 
asbestos.  The  driver  had  in  the  meantime,  also  at 
my  expense,  taken  a  large  glass  of  wine ;  but  instead  of 
being  in  league  with  the  cook,  as  I  supposed  he  would 
be,  he  told  me  to  "give  him  a  lira — quite  enough,"  and 
drove  off  rapidly  before  the  macaroni  man  could  vo- 
ciferate his  demands  for  more. 

Mabel  Phipps  Bergolio,  the  American  lady  whose  re- 
marks on  frying  were  quoted  on  another  page,  hardly 
thinks  it  true  that  the  Italians  are  too  poor  to  eat 
macaroni.  "My  husband  thinks  it  depends  upon  the 
part  of  Italy  they  live  in.  Here,  the  contadine  eat 
minestrone — a  thick  soup  made  of  oil,  garlic,  and  all 
kinds  of  vegetables  which  they  cultivate  here.  In 
Piedmont  rice  is  the  principal  food,  because  it  is  grown 
there  in  large  quantities.  In  the  mountains  near  here, 
our  maid  tells  me,  they  eat  minestrone  and  chestnuts 
all  the  year  round  and  nothing  else.  In  the  South, 
Naples,  etc.,  macaroni  is  eaten  and  is  cheaper  there 
than  in  this  part  of  the  country  on  account  of  the  flour 


328  FOOD    AND     FLAVOR 

which  is  raised  there.  Garlic  and  oil  are  used  in  pre- 
paring it,  and  this,  with  fruit,  seems  to  be  the  food 
of  the  meridionale.  In  the  North  potatoes  and  polenta 
are  eaten  in  large  quantities  in  regions  where  the  soil  is 
adapted  to  raising  tubers  and  corn." 

COOKED   CHEESE   IN    PLACE   OF    MEAT. 

It  would  be  sufficient  honor  for  one  nation  to  pro- 
vide the  world  with  the  best  olive  oil  and  the  real  staff 
of  life.  But  Italy  lays  claim  to  another  gastronomic 
distinction. 

It  is  generally  conceded  that  the  Americans  and  also 
the  English,  French,  Germans,  Russians  and  Scandi- 
navians, eat  more  than  is  necessary,  especially  meat. 
In  a  previous  chapter  attention  was  called  to  the  fact 
that,  in  the  cooking  of  the  future,  meat  is  destined,  for 
diverse  reasons,  to  be  used  largely,  if  not  chiefly,  as  a 
condiment  to  be  added  to  equally  nutritious  but 
cheaper  foods.  The  Italians,  more  than  any  other  na- 
tion, have  shown  how  this  can  be  done  without  any  real 
deprivation. 

When  our  greatest  man  of  letters,  Mr.  Howells,  was 
consul  in  Venice  and  gathering  the  material  for  his 
delightful  book  on  life  in  that  city,  he  was  impressed 
particularly  by  the  surprisingly  small  scale  on  which 
provisions  for  the  daily  meals  were  bought  and  the 
general  absence  of  gluttonous  excesses:  "As  to  the 
poorer  classes,  one  observes  without  great  surprise  how 


EPICUREAN    ITALY  3^9 

slenderly  they  fare,  and  how  with  a  great  habit  of 
talking  of  meat  and  drink,  the  verb  mangiare  remains 
in  fact  for  the  most  part  inactive  with  them.  But  it  is 
only  just  to  say  that  this  virtue  of  abstinence  seems  to 
be  not  wholly  the  result  of  necessity,  for  it  prevails 
with  other  classes  which  could  well  afford  the  opposite 
vice.  Meat  and  drink  do  not  form  the  substance  of 
conviviality  with  Venetians,  as  with  the  Germans  and 
the  English,  and  in  degree  with  ourselves;  and  I  have 
often  noticed  on  the  Mondays  at  the  Gardens,  and 
other  social  festivals  of  the  people,  how  the  crowd 
amused  itself  with  anything — music,  dancing,  walk- 
ing, talking — anything  but  the  great  northern  pastime 
of  gluttony." 

After  describing  the  meals  and  referring  to  the  great 
market  at  the  Rialto  and  the  way  provisions  are  dis- 
tributed throughout  the  city,  he  says:  "A  great  Bos- 
tonian,  whom  I  remember  to  have  heard  speculate  on 
the  superiority  of  a  state  of  civilization  in  which  you 
could  buy  two  cents'  worth  of  beef,  to  that  in  which 
so  small  a  quantity  was  unpurchasable,  would  find  the 
system  perfected  here,  where  you  can  buy  half  a  cent's 
worth." 

Half  a  cent's  worth  of  meat  will  not  go  very  far, 
even  in  Italy,  but  for  a  few  cents'  worth  you  can  get 
enough  to  impart  the  Flavor  of  veal,  lamb,  or  chicken 
to  a  pot  of  farinaceous  food  or  a  dish  of  vegetables,  and 
that  is  all  a  true  epicure  needs  to  be  happy. 


330  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

Throughout  Italy,  especially  in  the  South,  meat  is 
used  sparingly.  Large  joints  are  seldom  cooked,  be- 
cause of  the  effect  of  the  warm  climate  in  spoiling  ani- 
mal food  rapidly.  But  there  is  another  food  which 
does  not  thus  deteriorate  and  which  is  therefore  used 
largely  as  a  substitute  for  meat,  and  that  is  cheese. 

To  speak  of  cheese  as  a  substitute  for  meat  seems 
odd  to  those  who — like  most  Americans — ^have  been 
brought  up  to  look  on  cheese  with  French  eyes,  as  a 
dessert.  The  Italians  also  have  cheeses — notably  Gor- 
gonzola,  a  variety  of  Roquefort — which  are  eaten  at 
the  end  of  a  meal;  but  more  characteristically  Italian 
is  the  use  of  cheese  as  an  ingredient  of  various  cooked 
dishes,  which  take  the  place  of  meat. 

While  the  statement  made  by  one  writer  that  the 
Italians  put  cheese  into  everything  they  eat  is  an  ex- 
aggeration, it  is  true  that  many  of  their  dishes  are  thus 
enriched;  and  it  is  this  enriching  of  foods  with  cheese, 
to  make  up  for  the  absence  or  scarcity  of  meat,  that 
constitutes  one  of  the  great  lessons  Italy  is  teaching 
the  world.  Gastronomically,  this  lesson  is  as  valuable 
as  what  France  has  taught  the  world  regarding  the 
dessert  usefulness  of  ripened  cheese  as  an  appetizer;  and 
from  an  economic  point  of  view  it  is  much  more  im- 
portant, because  meat  is  becoming  dearer  every  year, 
whereas  cheese  is  not  only  cheaper  but  more  nutritious 
than  meat. 

More     nutritious — yes,     twice     as     nutritious.     In 


EPICUREAN    ITALY  331 

Farmers'  Bulletin  487,  entitled  Cheese  and  its  Economi- 
cal Uses^  two  of  our  Government's  nutrition  experts 
published  a  table  (p.  13)  based  on  a  series  of  experi- 
ments which  show  that  "cheese  has  nearly  twice  as 
much  protein,  weight  for  weight,  as  beef  of  average 
composition  as  purchased,  and  that  its  fuel  value  is 
more  than  twice  as  great.  It  contains  over  twenty-five 
per  cent,  more  protein  than  the  same  weight  of  porter- 
house steak  as  purchased,  and  nearly  twice  as  much 
fat." 

Thus  does  science  justify  the  culinary  practices  of 
Italy,  and  explain  how  it  happens  that  the  sturdy  sons 
of  that  land,  instead  of  being,  as  many  foolishly  sup- 
pose, idlers,  habitually  indulging  in  dolce  far  niente^ 
can  and  do  accomplish  the  hardest  manual  labor, 
notably  railway  building — abroad  as  well  as  at  home 
— on  a  diet  which  contains  little  or  no  meat. 

Among  the  first  things  that  strike  one  on  visiting 
Italy  the  first  time  is  the  universal  custom  of  putting 
grated  cheese  in  the  soup. 

Being  hot,  the  soup  dissolves  the  cheese  at  once ;  and 
this  is  a  point  of  great  importance.  There  is  an  im- 
pression the  world  over  that  cheese  is  indigestible,  and 
this  is  correct  so  far  as  raw  cheese  is  concerned,  unless  it 
is  taken  in  small  quantities  at  dessert  and  carefully 
munched  with  a  hard  cracker  or  a  crusty  roll  of  bread. 
Cooked  cheese,  however,  is  easily  digested — provided 
the  cook  knows  her  business  and  does  not  follow  the 


332  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

British  custom,  graphically  described  by  the  eminent 
chemist,  W.  Mattieu  Williams,  of  making,  for  in- 
stance, "macaroni-cheese,"  which  is  "commonly  pre- 
pared in  England  by  depositing  macaroni  in  a  pie-dish, 
and  then  covering  it  with  a  stratum  of  grated  cheese, 
and  placing  this  in  an  oven  or  before  a  fire  until  the 
cheese  is  desiccated,  browned,  and  converted  into  a 
horny,  caseous  form  of  carbon  that  would  induce 
chronic  dyspepsia  in  the  stomach  of  a  wild-boar  if  he 
fed  upon  it  for  a  week." 

How  it  should  be  prepared,  it  is  not  the  mission  of 
this  volume  to  indicate.  The  best  cook  books  reveal 
the  method  and  so  does  the  Farmers'  Bulletin  (No. 
487)  just  referred  to.  This  bulletin  should  be,  in- 
deed, bound  and  placed  in  the  kitchen  of  every  Amer- 
ican and  English  home,  as  it  goes  into  the  subject  in 
much  more  detail  than  any  of  the  cook  books.  There 
are  in  it  pages  on  Kinds  of  Cheese  Used  in  American 
Homes,  The  Care  of  Cheese  in  the  Home,  The  Flavor 
of  Cheese,  Nutritive  Value  and  Cost  of  Cheese  and 
Some  Other  Food  Materials,  Home-made  Cheeses, 
Cheese  Dishes  and  Their  Preparation,  Cheese  Soups  and 
Vegetables  Cooked  with  Cheese,  Cheese  Salads  and 
Sandwiches,  Cheese  Pastry,  etc. 

Especially  important  are  the  pages  devoted  to  a  de- 
scription of  "Cheese  dishes  which  may  be  used  in  the 
same  way  as  meat."  Under  this  head  we  find,  among 
many  other  things,  and  with  the  recipes  in  full,  refer- 


EPICUREAN    ITALY  333 

ences  to  cheese  sauces,  corn  and  cheese  souffle,  macaroni 
and  cheese,  baked  rice  and  cheese,  cheese  rolls,  nut  and 
cheese  roast,  Boston  roast,  baked  eggs  with  cheese, 
cheese  omelet,  fried  bread  with  cheese,  cheese  with 
mush,  cheese  croquettes,  oatmeal  with  cheese,  etc. 

Doubtless  the  best  cooking  cheese  is  Parmesan;  but 
when  the  genuine  article  cannot  be  obtained  in  bulk 
(never  buy  it  grated,  in  a  bottle)  it  is  better  to  use 
Swiss  or  even  American  cheese  (cheddar).  The  Dutch 
Edam  is  also  excellent  for  the  kitchen,  as  good  as  when 
eaten  raw.  Of  the  Italian  uncooked  cheeses  for  the 
table,  the  best  are  Gorgonzola  and,  particularly, 
Caciocavallo.  This  is  not,  as  its  name  suggests,  made 
of  mare's  milk.  It  looks  like  a  rag  doll,  is  similar  to 
Edam  in  consistency  and  has  a  very  pleasant  and 
unique  Flavor  owing  to  its  being  slightly  smoked.  Be- 
ware of  American  imitations,  cured  with  "liquid 
smoke." 

In  times  of  meat  scarcity  and  high  prices  it  is  well  to 
remember  that  hard-working  men  can  (as  experiments 
have  shown)  fully  sustain  their  strength  for  months  on 
the  cheapest  of  all  products  of  the  dairy — cottage 
cheese  made  of  skim  milk,  to  which,  just  before  eating 
it,  some  cream  is  added  for  fat  and  flavor.  Strange  to 
say,  in  all  the  literature  on  this  matter  I  have  never  seen 
any  reference  to  the  transformations  to  which  cottage 
cheese  can  be  subjected.  By  standing  a  few  days,  it 
gets  a  ripening  flavor  that  appeals  to  epicures,  and  if 


334  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

it  is  then  boiled  it  assumes  a  consistency  like  that  of 
Port  Salut,  making  another  pleasant  variant. 

A  helpful  little  volume  for  those  who  wish  to  know 
how  the  Italians  use  cheese  in  cooking  and  how  they 
make  a  number  of  other  national  dishes  is  Antonia 
Isola's  "Simple  Italian  Cookery."  Here  are  receipts 
showing  how  risotto^  and  other  rice  dishes,  ravioli^ 
polenta,  gnocchi  of  farina  or  potato,  are  made  (all  of 
them  delicious  and  desirable  in  American  and  English 
homes,  particularly  the  gnocchi),  and  how  eggs,  fishes, 
vegetables,  and  meats  can  be  cooked  in  tempting  Italian 
ways.  The  chestnut,  as  a  matter  of  course,  is  a  fre- 
quent ingredient  in  the  dressings  and  the  pastry. 

BIRDS,    TOMATO    PASTE    AND    GARLIC. 

While  the  Italians  are  sparing  in  their  use  of  meat,  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  they  do  not  know  how  to 
make  the  most  of  it  when  they  do  indulge  in  it.  They 
are  born  cooks — it 's  a  great  pity  none  of  them  are  ever 
to  be  found  in  our  "intelligence  offices" — and  their  ex- 
perts know  as  well  as  the  great  French  chefs  how  to 
prepare  a  savory  roast,  stew,  broil,  entree,  or  dessert. 
In  the  making  of  sauces,  the  blending  of  meat  and  veg- 
etable flavors,  the  cooking  of  fish  and  shellfish,  one  also 
finds  much  variety  and  local  Flavor  on  the  peninsula. 
Details  as  to  those  points  may  be  found  in  abundance 
in  the  forty  pages  Col.  Ne wham-Davis  devotes  to 
this  country  in  his  "Gourmet's  Guide  to  Europe." 


EPICUREAN    ITALY  335 

To  enjoy  the  national  and  particularly  the  local  va- 
rities  of  Flavor,  it  is  well  to  take  only  a  room  in  an 
Italian  hotel  and  eat  in  the  restaurants.  I  always  do 
this,  paying  a  little  more  for  the  room,  which  is  only 
fair  to  the  host.  The  trouble  with  these  hotels  is  that 
the  table  d'hote,  though  usually  good,  is  not  Italian  but 
French,  and  in  Italy  you  want  something  different,  to 
get  an  idea  of  the  variations  in  flavor  of  the  spaghet- 
tis, the  minestrone  soups,  the  gnocchis,  the  risottos,  and 
so  on.  Sometimes  the  hotel  has  attached  to  it  a  locally 
conducted  restaurant,  in  which  case  it  is  needless  to 
hunt  for  another. 

For  one  of  their  gastronomic  habits  the  Italians  are 
justly  denounced  by  other  Europeans — their  slaughter 
of  millions  of  birds,  largely  blackbirds,  siskins,  green- 
finches, and  other  song  birds,  that  yearly  seek  a  refuge 
among  them  on  their  flight  to  or  from  the  north.  All 
efforts  to  curb  this  slaughter  have  so  far  proved  un- 
availing. The  difficulty  is  double:  the  birds  are  very 
good  to  eat  and  the  common  people  cannot  understand 
our  point  of  view.  Lina  Duff  Gordon,  in  her  book, 
"Home  Life  in  Italy"  (which  takes  the  reader  right  into 
the  kitchens  and  the  market  places),  tells  about  one  of 
the  hunters:  "Once,  when  he  offered  us  ,a  bunch  of 
blackbirds  strung  together  by  the  neck,  which  he  said 
made  an  excellent  roast,  we  seized  upon  the  opportun- 
ity to  deliver  a  lecture  on  the  shooting  of  singing  birds. 
He  listened  so  attentively  that  we  rejoiced  at  having 


336  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

made  an  impression  on  an  important  convert,  until 
looking  up  with  eyes  very  wide  open,  he  exclaimed: 
'Ah !  Sangue  della  Madonna !  Then  you  have  no  sport 
in  England!'" 

It  is  hardly  fair  to  chide  the  Italians  for  making  too 
much  use  of  garlic,  unless  we  include  in  our  censure  the 
French-  -particularly  those  of  the  Southern  provinces 
— and  the  Spaniards,  who  not  only  put  it  in  their  food 
but  eat  it  raw  in  chunks.  On  this  point  I  may  be  per- 
mitted to  cite  from  my  "Spain  and  Morocco"  some  re- 
marks on  a  peasant  who  drove  me  from  Baza  to  Lorca : 
"At  noon  he  took  his  lunch,  composed  of  ten  raw  to- 
matoes, half  a  loaf  of  bread,  a  piece  of  raw  ham,  and 
a  large  bulb  of  garlic  consisting  of  a  score  of  bulblets, 
which  he  took  one  at  a  time  to  flavor  his  portions.  It 
is  doubtful  if  he  expected  another  meal  that  day,  and  in 
watching  him  a  brilliant  theory  came  to  my  mind: — 
perhaps  the  poorer  classes  in  Spain  are  so  fond  of  gar- 
lic for  the  reason  that  they  have  so  little  to  eat ;  for,  as 
it  takes  several  days  to  digest  a  bulb  of  it,  they  always 
feel  as  if  they  had  something  in  their  stomachs." 

In  the  best  Italian  restaurants,  as  in  those  of  Paris, 
it  is  understood  that  garlic,  while  delicious  for  flavor- 
ing, is  so  only  in  homoeopathic  doses.  Moreover  one 
can  always  dine  without  garlic  by  simply  saying  to  the 
waiter,  when  ordering  a  dish,  senz'  aglio. 

Whether  Italian  peasants  eat  raw  ham,  as  that  Span- 
ish teamster  did,   I  do  not  know.     Ham  is  not  an 


EPICUREAN    ITALY  337 

Italian  specialty.  At  Naples  one  may  get  the  genuine 
smoked*  article,  but  it  is  so  expensive  that  only  the 
wealthy  folk  can  afford  it.  But  in  his  enthusiastic 
addiction  to  tomatoes  that  Spaniard  was  akin  to  the 
Italians.  How  they  do  love  them — raw  or  cooked — 
more  even  than  we  do,  if  that  be  possible.  Next  to 
cheese,  nothing  is  so  frequently  added  to  the  macaronis 
as  tomato  sauce,  either  as  we  make  it,  or  in  the  form  of 
the  paste  which  is  one  of  the  unique  Italian  products 
that  ought  to  be  better  known  in  other  countries. 

The  best  tomato  paste  comes  from  the  Province  of 
Naples,  where  it  is  made  of  a  small  variety  of  the  fruit 
which  has  a  special  Flavor  that  is  much  relished.  This, 
to  be  sure,  they  do  not  waste  on  foreigners.  What  is 
exported  is,  as  we  read  in  the  "Daily  Consular  and 
Trade  Reports"  (Dec,  1910),  usually  not  even  second 
rate,  but  "of  the  third  quality,"  which  is  "of  course, 
very  inferior,  because  it  contains  little  tomato  extract 
and  is  almost  entirely  liquid.  There  is  no  demand  for 
it  in  the  Italian  market,  and  it  is  prepared  exclusively 
for  exportation  to  America,  where  it  meets  the  require- 
ments of  the  immigrant  peasants  from  Sicily.  The 
latter,  when  at  home,  either  do  not  use  any  tomato 
paste  or  consume  a  certain  kind  of  hard  tomato  paste 
(conserva  di  pomidoro)  which  is  made  by  the  peasant 
women." 

Consul  Hernando  de  Soto  further  informs  us  that 
"tomato  paste  of  the  first  and  second  quality  also  is 


338  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

exported,  though  in  much  smaller  quantity,  from 
Palermo  to  the  United  States,  where  it  is  patronized  by 
a  more  prosperous  class  of  Italians  and  also,  it  is  stated, 
by  some  Americans." 

Many  more  Americans  would  buy  tomato  paste  were 
they  sure  of  not  getting  the  third-class  article  after  pay- 
ing for  the  best,  as  happens  with  so  many  things  we 
eat. 


IX 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES 


A    COSMOPOLITAN    CUISINE. 

N  the  matter  of  cuisine  the  Ger- 
mans are  the  most  cosmopoli- 
tan of  all  peoples;  they  learn 
eagerly  from  other  nations, 
and  sometimes  improve  on  the 
original.  They  like  variety; 
when  traveling,  unlike  the 
English  and  Americans,  they  prefer  things  new  to 
them,  and  it  has  been  justly  said  that  one  of  the 
Germans'  chief  objects  in  touring  is  to  enjoy  exotic 
pleasures  of  the  table. 

At  home  they  avoid  monotony  by  frequently  supping 
in  restaurants  or  beer  gardens,  the  whole  family  being 
taken  there,  including  the  dog,  unless  a  great  crowd  is 
expected  because  of  a  special  musical  treat,  in  which 

339 


340  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

case  the  public  is  informed  that  ''Hunde  diirfen  nicht 
mitgebracht  werden.'' 

And  how  enthusiastically  these  burghers  discuss  the 
diverse  good  things  placed  before  them!  A  Berlin 
author  maintains  that  three-fourths  of  all  Germans, 
and  four-fifths  of  their  cousins,  the  Austrians,  talk  more 
about  eating  than  about  anything  else,  and  that  the 
most  successful  novels  in  their  countries  are  those  in 
which  there  are  descriptions  of  banquets  that  make  the 
mouth  water.  No  need  of  preaching  gastronomy  to 
them! 

To  deny  that  the  Germans  have  a  cuisine  of  their 
own,  as  some  of  their  own  writers  have  done,  is  folly. 
While  they  have  set  a  good  example  in  being  willing 
to  learn  from  their  neighbors — as  the  Italians  learned 
from  the  Orientals  and  the  French  from  the  Italians — 
they  have  also  originated  and  improved  a  number  of 
things  gastronomic  which  deserve  to  be  transplanted  to 
other  countries. 

A  contributor  to  the  "Frankfurter  Zeitung"  points 
out  that  "more  than  one  dish  which  in  Germany,  France, 
and  England  is  relished  under  a  French  name  was  orig- 
inated by  German  cooks."  He  exhorts  these  cooks  to 
give  the  dishes  they  create  German  names,  choosing 
such  as  a  foreigner  can  pronounce.  England  has  suc- 
ceeded in  adding  some  of  its  food  names — like  beef- 
steak, Irish  stew,  mock-turtle  soup,  pudding,  roast  beef, 
toast — to  the  world-language,   and  the  French  have 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     341 

shown  by  their  adoption  of  Lied^  Concertmeister^ 
Hinterland^  Bock,  etc.,  that  they  would  not  balk  at 
German  culinary  terms. 

DELICATESSEN    STORES. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  some  German  terms  have  already 
become  part  of  the  world-language — among  them 
sauerkraut,  pumpernickel  and  the  names  of  various 
sausages  and  cheeses.  The  most  eloquent  testimony  to 
German  international  influence  is,  however,  the 
ubiquitous  delicatessen  store.  In  New  York  there  is 
one  every  few  blocks,  and  these  places  are  patronized 
by  many  who  are  not  Germans.  To  be  sure,  few  of 
these  shops  equal  the  originals  in  Munich,  Dresden, 
or  Berlin,  in  variety  and  gorgeousness  of  display. 

Edward  Grieg,  like  most  of  the  great  composers,  was 
an  epicure.  It  is  related  of  him  that  one  of  his  favorite 
amusements  was  to  gaze  at  the  displays  of  good  things 
in  the  delicatessen  stores.  One  day,  while  lingering 
before  one  of  these  windows  he  said  to  the  American 
composer,  Frank  Van  der  Stucken:  "What  an  ideal 
symphony!  How  perfect  in  all  its  details,  in  form, 
contents,  and  instrumentation!" 

Grand  gastronomic  symphonies  they  are,  indeed; 
and  what  is  more,  the  appeal  of  these  delicacies  is  to 
the  palate  as  well  as  to  the  eyes.  When  a  German 
pays  his  good  money  he  wants  something  good  to  eat, 
and  if  he  is  fooled,  woe  to  the  culprit.     Strict  are  the 


342  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

laws,  and  enforced  they  are,  too.  Officers  of  the  health 
boards  visit  the  stores  at  unexpected  times,  taking  away 
samples  for  chemical  analysis.  Fines  are  inflicted  for 
the  least  lack  of  obedience  to  the  pure  food  law,  while 
gross  offenders  may  be  punished  by  life-long  imprison- 
ment with  hard  labor. 

The  examiners,  of  course,  visit  not  only  the  deli- 
catessen stores  but  the  butcher  shops,  groceries,  bakeries 
and  all  places  where  food  is  offered  for  sale. 

In  Berlin  there  is  a  special  institute  for  the  inspec- 
tion of  foodstuffs  which  is  directly  under  the  control 
of  the  police.  It  makes  chemical  and  bacteriological 
examinations  of  things  offered  for  sale.  Purchasers 
who  suffer  from  the  ill  effects  of  foodstuffs  have  the 
privilege  of  applying  to  the  police,  who  promptly  make 
an  examination  of  the  suspected  article.  This  does 
not  cost  the  complainant  a  penny  and  the  expense  to 
the  city  of  this  invaluable  institute  is  only  about  $12,- 
ooo  a  year. 

Encouraged  by  the  knowledge  of  these  facts,  a  Ger- 
man may  boldly  enter  any  delicatessen  store,  confident 
of  getting  things  that  will  taste  good  and  do  no  harm. 
And  what  a  variety  of  luxuries  is  spread  out  before 
him! 

Cold  roast  joints  of  all  the  butchers'  meats  are 
placed  in  line  on  the  counter,  with  hams,  raw  or 
cooked,  and  sausages  diverse,  all  eager  to  be  sliced  to 
suit.     I  say  eager  because  these  things — especially  the 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     343 

sausages  and  the  hams — taste  so  good  that  it  surely 
must  give  them  altruistic  joy  to  be  eaten.  Cold  fowl 
is  there,  too,  ready  for  the  carving  knife,  or  to  be  taken 
away  whole.  The  Germans  often  lunch  or  sup  on 
these  sliced  meats,  huge  platterfuls  of  which  are 
brought  on  the  table — Gemischter  Aufschnitt — and 
hone  of  it  is  wasted,  you  may  be  sure. 

Chicken  and  fish  salads  diverse,  including  herring 
salad,  and  potato  salad — one  of  Germany's  great  con- 
tributions to  the  world's  gastronomic  treasure — are  at 
hand,  as  well  as  another  international  delicacy  of  Teu- 
tonic origin — sauerkraut,  raw  or  cooked;  and  sauer- 
kraut is  a  delicacy;  nor  is  it  indigestible  when  cooked 
the  right  way  and  long  enough.  Proof  of  its  high 
standing  is  provided  by  the  fact  that  France's  gastro- 
nomic high  priest,  Brillat-Savarin — whose  famous 
work  on  the  Physiology  of  Taste  has  become  so  popular 
that  a  penny  edition  of  it  is  sold  in  the  streets — ^puts 
it,  with  partridge,  on  the  menu  of  one  of  three  fine 
dinners  he  suggests.  The  French,  indeed,  are  al- 
most as  much  addicted  to  the  eating  of  sauerkraut  as 
are  the  Germans.  In  England  and  America  not  a  few 
persons  foolishly  sneer  at  it  as  "rotten  cabbage."  It  is 
no  more  rotten  than  pickles  are  rotten,  for  it  is  simply 
pickled  cabbage — cabbage  pickled  in  its  own  juice  plus 
salt,  and  soured  by  fermentation. 

The  pickles  eaten  by  Germans  are  not  all  sour;  they 
like,  almost  better  than  the  sour  kinds,  the  dill  pickles, 


344  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

which  are  cucumbers  preserved  in  a  liquid  flavored  with 
the  blossoms  and  seeds  of  an  umbelliferous  Oriental 
plant,  anethum^  cultivated  in  German  gardens  for  its 
spicy  aroma.  Teutons  seem  to  take  to  this  naturally; 
with  others  it  is  an  acquired  taste,  like  that  for 
olives. 

Smoked  or  soused  herrings,  sprats,  and  diverse  spiced 
fish  {marinirf)  are  always  on  sale  in  the  delicatessen 
stores,  and  they  are  acknowledged  among  the  best 
specialties  of  Germany.  Eel  and  other  fish  in  jelly 
are  other  characteristic  edibles  the  Fatherland  has 
reason  to  be  proud  of;  and  have  you  ever  eaten  cold 
goose  in  an  acidulated  meat  jelly?  It  is  worth 
while  going  to  Berlin,  just  to  taste  this  Prussian 
Gdnseweisssauer, 

Smoked  Pomeranian  goosebreast  is  always  in  stock; 
its  taste  is  not  unlike  that  of  raw  smoked  ham  and  there 
is  no  danger  of  trichinosis,  though,  to  be  sure,  that 
danger  from  eating  ham  has  been  reduced  in  Germany 
to  a  minin?um  by  the  strict  system  of  meat  inspec- 
tion. 

The  heads  and  feet  of  calves,  sheep,  and  swine,  wild 
and  domestic,  are  much  in  demand;  a  wild  boar's  head 
often  is  the  center  of  interest  in  the  show  window  of  a 
delicatessen  store.  Of  course  there  are  also  canned 
meats  and  vegetables,  with  diverse  fancy  groceries  and 
cheeses  of  various  countries,  together  with  crackers  and 
breads  of  diverse  shape,  size,  and  color.     But  enough 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES    345 

has  been  said  to  show  that  a  German  delicatessen  store 
is  a  treasure  house  of  appetizing  foods,  many  of  them 
peculiar  to  the  Fatherland,  and  most  of  them  agreeable 
to  the  palate  of  a  real  gourmet. 

It  is  possible  that  a  thousand  years  hence  Bismarck's 
fame  as  a  statesman  may  have  waned;  but  Bismarck 
herring  will  continue  to  be  served  in  all  lands  until  the 
seas  are  fished  out.  On  a  warm  summer  day,  when 
you  are  not  hungry  and  yet  feel  a  vague  longing  for 
something  piquant,  try  a  Bismarck  herring  with  potato 
salad.  You  will  bless  me  for  the  advice.  It  is  very 
good  for  the  stomach,  too,  the  doctors  say. 

SAUSAGES    AND    SMOKED    HAM. 

The  French  have  excellent  sausages  and  so  have  the 
Italians.  They  are  hard  to  beat,  and  yet,  in  the  matter 
of  variety  and  general  excellence,  the  Germans  as 
makers  of  wurste  are  supreme. 

Various  are  the  tastes  of  sausage  eaters,  but  all  of 
them  may  be  gratified  west  of  the  Rhine.  I  have  be- 
fore me  a  book  by  Nicolaus  Merges  bearing  the  title 
"Internationale  Wurst  und  Fleischwaaren  Fabrika- 
tion."  Concise  directions  are  given  in  it  for  the  making 
of  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  kinds  of  sausages,  all 
of  which  are  manufactured  in  Germany,  though  some 
are  of  foreign  origin. 

Why  so  many  kinds  of  sausage?  There  is  not  much 
difference  in  their  nutritive  value.     They  are  made  in 


346  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

different  ways  simply  to  secure  variety  in  Flavor,  to 
please  all  palates. 

The  book  referred  to  shows  how  this  variety  is  se- 
cured. .  Different  meats  are  used  and  these  are  di- 
versely olended,  spiced,  and  cured.  The  possibilities 
are  unlimited;  the  hundred  and  fifty  varieties  in  the 
Merges  volume  are  a  mere  fraction  of  the  total  number, 
nearly  every  locality  having  its  special  kind. 

Of  liver  sausages  there  are  two  dozen  varieties, 
the  cheapest  being  made  from  ordinary  beef  liver  while 
the  Gdnselebertriiffelwurst  (goose-liver- truffle  sau- 
sage) may  cost  a  dollar  a  pound.  Of  sausages  in  which 
blood  is  used  there  are  more  than  a  score.  These  are 
cheap,  and — well,  if  they  cost  nothing  I  would  n't  eat 
them. 

The  biggest  of  all  the  sausages  is  the  Cervelat  made 
in  Braunschweig  (many  German  towns  have  become 
world-famed  by  the  making  of  some  particularly  well- 
flavored  sausage,  cheese,  cake,  or  beer).  The  Bruns- 
wick brand  is  compounded  of  beef  and  pork,  both  lean 
and  fat.  The  Westphalian  variety  includes  less  beef. 
Some  kinds  of  Cervelat  exclude  pork,  containing  only 
beef  or  veal.  There  is  also  a  homoeopathetic  Cervelat. 
It  is  intended  for  convalescents,  and  has  a  minimum  of 
fat  and  spices.    A  kosher  Cervelat  is  made  for  Hebrews. 

Beef  from  old  cows  is  not  in  the  best  repute,  yet  for 
the  making  of  Salami  it  is  preferred  to  the  tenderloin 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     347 

of  a  young  steer.  (The  toughest  meat  sometimes  has 
the  richest  Flavor.)  Salami  hails  from  Italy,  but 
special  varieties  of  it  are  made  in  Germany,  as  well  as 
in  Holland,  Switzerland,  Russia,  and  Hungary. 

It  is  needless  to  give  details  regarding  Plockwurst, 
Mettwurst,  Knoblauchwurst,  Knackwurst,  Schwarten- 
magen,  etc.,  in  all  their  transformations.  In  some 
varieties  anchovies,  kidneys,  or  brains  are  used. 

Barenwurst  is  not  often  seen  now,  as  bears  are  get- 
ting scarce.  Horse  meat  of  course  is  used  (why  not*?) 
for  cheaper  sorts,  and  the  bow-wow  joke  of  the  comic 
papers  is  not  altogether  without  foundation.  Ameri- 
can Indians  agreed  with  the  Chinese  in  regarding  dog 
meat  as  a  great  delicacy — the  dish  of  honor  to  be 
served  to  guests.  Dog  meat  sausage  may  be  quite  legit- 
imate, as  long  as  it  is  honestly  labeled  as  such. 

There  is  a  story  of  a  wealthy  Berlin  butcher  whose 
son  had  been  promoted  in  the  army  by  Moltke,  and 
who,  to  show  his  gratitude,  advised  the  Field  Marshal 
never  to  eat  sausage.  But  those  days  of  uncertainty 
are  past.  Inspection  is  now  so  strict  in  the  Fatherland 
that  one  can  safely  eat  whatever  is  offered. 

When  the  eminent  German  novelist,  Ernst  von 
Wolzogen,  visited  the  United  States  (1911)  he  ex- 
claimed, on  the  eve  of  departure,  to  a  reporter  for  the 
New  York  "Staatszeitung" :  "Great  heavens,  if  you 
knew  what  an  indescribable  longing  has  often  seized 


348  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

me  in  your  country  for  a  good  German  sausage  I  No — 
for  their  food  I  cannot  envy  the  Americans." 

Considering  the  large  number  of  Germans  in  the 
United  States  it  seems  strange  that  they  do  not  insist 
on  having  as  good  sausage  made  here  as  on  the  other 
side.  But  they  do  not.  The  home-made  sausage  is 
usually  compounded  of  worthless  scraps,  and  is  apt  to 
be  indigestible.  As  for  the  "imported"  Cervelat  and 
other  kinds,  they  are  often  so  in  name  only — which 
explains  that  wail,  de  profundis^  of  Freiherr  von 
Wolzogen. 

American  sausages  made  after  English  or  original 
recipes  are  generally  spoiled  by  an  excessive  amount  of 
sage.  Sage  should  always  be  used  homceopathically, 
else  it  overpowers  all  other  flavors.  Were  I  Czar  in 
the  realm  of  gastronomy  I  should  forbid  the  use  of  sage 
altogether. 

The  next  time  you  go  to  Europe  do  not  forget  to 
make  an  automobile  trip  from  Munich  to  Berlin,  taking 
in  Nuremberg  on  the  way.  We  did  that,  with  some 
friends,  in  the  summer  of  1912,  and  when  we  reached 
the  city  of  Hans  Sachs  we  steered  straight  for  the 
Bratwurstglocklein,  a  little  eating  shop,  known  by  name 
at  least,  to  epicures  the  world  over,  though  only  one 
dish  is  cooked  in  it,  and  that  dish,  as  the  name  indicates, 
is  sausage. 

Five  Wurstchen^  no  bigger  than  your  thumb,  are 
served  with  a  portion  of  sauerkraut.     The  cost  is  half 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     349 

a  mark — twelve  cents — a  portion  and  you  can  have  as 
many  encores  as  you  like.  Some  of  us  took  four,  and 
so  tender  and  tasty  were  the  little  things,  as  well  as 
the  kraut  that  we  had  no  occasion  to  regret  it.  After 
all,  we  were  mere  tyros,  as  our  waiter  informed  us; 
he  has  known  many  a  man  to  eat  a  dozen  portions  or 
more  and  not  send  for  an  ambulance — at  least,  that 's 
what  he  said.  The  number  of  portions  served  daily 
vary  from  3,000  to  5,000;  the  record  is  25,000  served 
on  a  day  when  there  was  a  Sangerfest. 

Nuremberg  has  two  other  eating  places  similar  to 
this,  but  the  Bratwurstglocklcin  maintains  its  pre- 
eminence, owing  to  its  traditions;  for  it  was  in  its 
little  rooms  that  the  men  who  (with  the  aid  of  the 
Bratwurstglocklcin)  made  that  city  famous — among 
them  Sachs,  Welleland  and  Diirer — used  to  gather  for 
food  and  drink. 

After  we  had  paid  our  bill — not  a  ruinous  one  for 
an  automobile  party — we  started  for  the  next  town  on 
our  list,  after  buying  a  few  boxes  of  the  world-famed 
honey  cakes  {Lehkuchen)  of  the  town.  We  all  had 
seen  the  other  sights  of  Nuremberg  before.  Besides, 
we  were  on  a  gastronomic  trip,  and  discipline  had  to  be 
preserved. 

Observation  has  convinced  me  that  Americans  would 
be  as  enthusiastic  sausage  eaters  as  the  Germans  are  if 
they  could  get  them  as  well  made  and  cooked.  In  a 
large  New  York  down-town  restaurant  you  can  see,  on 


350  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

certain  days,  half  the  guests  ordering  "country  sau- 
sages," which,  though  good,  are  not  to  be  mentioned 
on  the  same  day  as  those  of  the  Bratwurstgl5cklein. 
The  inference  is  inevitable  that  a  lunch-room  serving 
honest  duplicates  of  the  German  delicacy  would  prove 
a  gold-mine. 

The  proprietor  of  another  down-town  restaurant  who 
provides  excellent  little  Frankfurters  informed  me  he 
got  them  at  a  certain  shop  in  which  two  butchers  had 
successively  made  their  fortune  by  simply  manufactur- 
ing these  honest  little  sausages  and  really  smoking  them 
instead  of  using  "liquid  smoke."  It  makes  such  a  dif- 
ference to  the  palate  as  well  as  the  stomach. 

Genuine  Frankfurters  are  made  of  solid  meat  (not 
lungs)  and  they  are  always  smoked.  They  are  known 
as  Frankfurters  throughout  the  greater  part  of  Ger- 
many and  Austria,  but  in  Frankfort  they  call  them 
Wiener  Wiirstel,  to  dignify  them,  presumably,  as 
exotics. 

Smoked  sausages  and  other  meats  are  in  great  vogue 
among  the  Germans,  whose  addiction  to  them  gives 
them  the  right  to  pose  as  true  epicures.  Do  they  not 
provide  the  whole  world  with  smoked  goose-breast, 
Hamburger  Rauchfleish,  and  the  best  of  all  hams,  the 
smoked  Westphalian? 

In  South  Germany  they  have  a  special  word  for 
smoked  meats,  Geselchtes,  or  Selchware.  The  com- 
poser Brahms  never  missed  a  chance  to  get  a  dish  of 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES    351 

"G'selchtes" ;  it  gave  him  an  appetite  when  nothing 
else  would. 

Bismarck,  the  most  famous  of  German  gourmets, 
took  great  delight  in  feasting  on  smoked  meats  and  fish 
— Spickgans,  Spickaal,  Schinken,  &c.  He  knew  as 
much  about  the  different  varieties  and  the  places  they 
came  from  as  any  dealer  in  delicatessen,  as  we  know 
from  the  table  talk  recorded  by  Dr.  Moritz  Busch. 

Smoked  Westphalian  ham  has  carried  the  fame  of 
Germany  to  the  lunch  tables  of  all  parts  of  the  world ; 
and  not  a  whit  inferior  in  Flavor  is  the  Austrian  va- 
riety, Prager  Schinken.  Raw  or  cooked,  these  are 
among  the  superlative  delights  of  the  epicure,  ranking 
with  caviare,  Camembert,  and  canvasback  duck. 

On  the  appetizing  quality  of  properly  smoked  meats 
which  makes  the  mouth  water  and  facilitates  digestion 
I  have  already  commented. 

German  and  Austrian  hams  owe  their  fame  to  the 
fact  that  they  are  smoked  and  otherwise  cured  scien- 
tifically, regardless  of  cost,  with  a  view  to  developing 
the  most  delicate  Flavor. 

The  first  thing  to  be  noted  is  that  the  men  who  cure 
the  meats  do  not  dare  to  denature  them  (J.  ^.,  spoil 
their  natural  Flavor)  by  soaking  them  in  solutions  of 
chemicals  which  are  not  only  injurious  to  health  but 
which  would  make  it  possible  for  them  to  hide  the  pu- 
trescence of  spoiled  meats — as  is  so  often  done  in 
America, 


352  FOODAND    FLAVOR 

The  law  on  this  point  is  very  strict.  By  orders  of 
the  Imperial  Federal  Council,  dated  July  4,  1908,  the 
following  substances  have  been  forbidden :  Boric  acid 
and  salts  thereof,  formaldehyde,  the  hydroxides  and 
carbonates  of  the  alkaline  salts,  sulphurous  acid  and  the 
salts  thereof,  the  salts  of  hyposulphurous  acid,  hypo- 
fluoric  acid  and  salts  thereof,  salicylic  acid  and  its  com- 
pounds, chloric  acid  and  salts,  and  all  coloring  matter. 

Consul  Talbot  J.  Albert,  of  Brunswick  writes  that 
"the  German  inspection  laws,  especially  in  regard  to 
hams  and  all  hog  products  are  so  strict  that  their  adul- 
teration would  be  immediately  detected,  the  products 
confiscated,  and  the  manufacturer  severely  punished." 

The  ingredients  used  in  the  curing  of  hams  before 
they  are  smoked  are  salt,  saltpeter,  and  pepper.  The 
quantity  of  these  and  other  ingredients  and  the  method 
employed  are  business  secrets  difficult  to  ascertain. 

In  America,  sugar-cured  ham  is  advertised  in  large 
letters.  Sugar,  no  doubt,  is  a  good  preservative,  and 
it  is  harmless,  but  somehow  it  seems  as  incongruous 
with  meat  as  salt  is  with  cream  or  butter.  Ask  an  epi- 
cure if  he  would  like  his  oysters  with  sugar,  and  see 
him  shudder.  In  Germany,  hams  are  seldom  sugar- 
cured. 

"The  Daily  Consular  and  Trade  Reports"  for  De- 
cember 8,  1909,  contains  such  information  on  the  sub- 
ject of  smoked  sausages  and  hams  as  the  consuls  in  vari- 
ous German  cities  were  able  to  gather.     They  found 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     353 

that  sausage  is  smoked  up  to  three  or  four  weeks,  unless 
it  is  to  be  eaten  at  once.  The  smoking  makes  it  lose 
some  weight  and  cost  more — but  what  of  that,  as  long 
as  the  Flavor  is  improved'?  The  American  way  is  to 
save  the  full  weight  by  using  chemicals  and  then  sell 
the  denatured  stuff  as  "smoked"  meat.  It  is  profitable 
to  the  packer.  The  consumer — well,  it  serves  him 
right  if  he  continues  to  buy  such  stuff  without  a  pro- 
test. 

Of  the  contributors  to  the  Consular  symposium  on 
smoked  meats  in  Germany,  Vice-Consul  Frederick 
Hoyermann  of  Bremen  gave  the  most  informing  ac- 
count. 

"The  fresh  ham  is  put  into  pure  common  salt  (so- 
dium chloride)  and  is  kept  therein  for  about  three 
weeks,  whereupon  it  is  washed  and  air-dried.  After 
having  been  exposed  to  the  air  for  about  eight  days  it  is 
ready  for  the  smoking  'process^  which  lasts  from  six  to 
eight  weeks.  It  is  hung  up  in  the  smoke  of  beech- 
wood  chips,  which  must  burn  slowly  so  as  not  to  create 
heat  or  evolve  too  much  smoke.  The  ham  must  be 
smoked  thoroughly  but  gradually,  and  must  remain 
cool  while  undergoing  the  process.  Thereupon  it  is 
cleaned  and  is  then  ready  for  use." 

Now  note  what  the  same  writer  says  about  the 
"quick-smoking"  process:  "Hams  are  smoked  by  a 
simpler  and  cheaper  process,  pine  wood  being  used  for 
smoking  instead  of  beech,  the  time  allowed  for  smoking 


354  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

is  considerably  reduced,  and  stronger  smoke  applied. 
Hams  thus  cured  are,  of  course,  inferior  in  quality,  as 
they  lack  in  Flavor  and  are  not  fit  for  export,  because 
only  high-class  meats  will  pay  the  cost  of  transporta^ 
tion." 

The  so-called  Westphalian  hams  do  not  all  come 
from  Westphalia.  The  name  is  generally  applied 
to  choice  hams  which  have  been  smoked  thoroughly  but 
gradually  in  accordance  with  the  methods  indicated  in 
the  preceding  paragraphs. 

One  more  important  detail.  The  Germans  know 
the  value  of  feeding  Flavor  into  food.  As  Consul  Carl 
Bailey  Hurst,  of  Plauen  wrote:  "The  best  and  most 
durable  hams  are  those  of  hogs  which  have  been  fed 
during  the  few  weeks  previous  to  slaughtering  on  acorns 
or  corn." 

Juniper  berries  are  sometimes  thrown  on  the  beech 
wood  while  hams  are  being  smoked,  in  the  belief  that 
that  still  further  improves  their  Flavor.  Maybe  it 
does — I  have  had  no  opportunity  for  comparisons. 
Possibly  it  is  a  mistake.  The  Germans,  though  they 
make  the  best  hams  and  sausages  in  the  world,  are  as  a 
nation  far  from  impeccable ;  in  the  use  of  spices,  in  par- 
ticular, they  often  blunder  grossly.  It  is  surely  an 
aberration  of  taste  to  mix  cloves,  bay  leaves,  cinnamon, 
caraway  seeds,  sage,  or  ginger  with  the  preserving  fluid ; 
for  these  strong  condiments  destroy  the  individual 
Flavor  of  the  meat. 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     355 

Excessive  use  of  spices  is  the  chief  blemish  of  Ger- 
man cookery.  Many  otherwise  well-made  dishes  are 
spoiled  by  the  addition  of  pungent  condiments  which 
completely  monopolize  the  palate.  The  excessive  use 
of  these  condiments  is  a  survival  of  medieval  coarse- 
ness. I  shall  not  dwell  on  this,  however,  or  on  other 
deplorable  relics  of  the  coarse  appetite  of  former  gen- 
erations, because  the  object  of  this  book  is  not  to  point 
out  the  shortcomings  of  European  nations  but  to  call 
attention  to  practices  in  which  they  are  ahead  of  us. 
Let  us  therefore  proceed  to  another  department  of  gas- 
tronomy in  which  the  Germans  (and  their  neighbors) 
can  teach  us  useful  lessons. 

LIVE    FISH    BROUGHT    TO    THE    KITCHEN. 

The  Paradise  of  fish-eaters  is  Copenhagen.  New 
York  and  other  American  port  towns  could  get  some 
very  important  hints  from  the  way  things  are  done 
there.  Before  1892  it  was  difficult  to  bring  live  fish 
into  the  town  without  contaminating  them  with  sew- 
age and  spoiling  their  flavor.  In  that  year  a  general 
sewage  system  was  constructed  by  which  the  city's  sew- 
age is  carried  two  kilometers  out  into  the  open  sea,  thus 
putting  an  end  to  the  contamination  of  the  ocean  front 
and  the  harbor.  The  gratifying  results  of  this  reform 
were  described  by  the  London  "Lancet's"  representative 
at  the  Sanitary  Congress  in  Copenhagen,  October, 
1910: 


356  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

"This  not  only  puts  an  end  to  the  nuisances  that  used 
to  arise,  but  enables  boats  full  of  live  fish  to  come  close 
to  shore  and  right  into  the  town  by  means  of  the  fresh- 
water canals.  In  this  manner  at  least  the  smaller  fish 
are  kept  alive  till  the  moment  they  are  sold.  Any 
number  of  wooden  boats  are  pierced  with  holes  and 
filled  with  fish;  these  boats  just  float  on  the  surface  of 
the  water,  and  the  living  fish  is  taken  out  of  them  when 
wanted.  But  as  every  one  cannot  go  to  the  water's 
edge  to  buy  fish,  there  are  water  tanks  on  wheels  and 
the  live  fish  is  brought  to  the  doors  of  the  people's 
houses. 

"Never  before,"  this  sanitarian  continues,  "have  I 
been  in  a  town  where  all  the  fish,  whether  cheap  or  dear 
is  so  beautifully  fresh.  The  principal  fish  market  was 
built  by  the  municipality  and  is  let  to  a  wholesale  fish 
salesman.  It  is  a  delight  to  see  how  clean  and  bright 
these  premises  are  kept.  There  is  no  spreading  the  fish 
on  slabs  so  that  dust  and  dirt  may  settle  on  them. 
Very  pretty  tessellated  tile  tanks  are  filled  with  running 
water,  and  here  the  smaller  fish  swim  about." 

In  Berlin  and  other  German  cities  the  fish  are  also 
brought  alive  to  the  kitchen.  An  eminent  artist  who 
is  also  an  ideal  hausfrau,  Mme.  Gadski,  informed  me 
that  she  would  n't  think  of  buying  a  dead  fish.  "They 
are  brought  to  the  kitchen  alive,  and  I  reject  those  that 
are  not  swimming  about,"  she  said. 

The  Germans  are  great  eaters  of  fresh-water  fishes. 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     357 

and  there  are  ingenious  arrangements  for  bringing  them 
to  market  alive. 

The  large  fish  of  the  ocean  cannot,  of  course,  be  de- 
livered alive,  but  the  transportation  facilities  are  now 
so  excellent  that  not  only  the  more  expensive  kinds,  like 
sole,  turbot,  and  sterlet,  but  the  cheaper  sorts,  like  cod, 
haddock,  plaice,  and  herring,  are  brought  to  city  and 
town  markets  in  prime  condition. 

A  German  culinary  authority  specially  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  "ancient  and  fish-like  smell"  is 
a  thing  of  the  past.  In  the  days  when  transportation 
facilities  were  less  adequate  this  odor  made  it  necessary 
to  boil  fish  in  two  waters,  throwing  the  first  away. 
Now  the  cook  has  only  the  natural  odor  of  the  un- 
spoiled fish  to  deal  with,  which,  being  agreeable,  is 
carefully  preserved  in  the  cooking. 

The  fishing  places  off  the  German  coast  are  visited 
daily  by  fast  steamers  to  collect  the  catch.  The  boats 
are  provided  with  refrigerating  apparatus,  and  so  are 
the  express  trains  which  at  Stettin,  Geestemmiinde, 
Cuxhaven,  and  other  coast  towns,  take  the  fish  from 
the  boats  and  carry  them  at  full  speed  to  the  cities  all 
over  the  Empire. 

The  same  excellent  arrangements  for  keeping  the 
fish  cold  without  spoiling  their  flavor  by  freezing  them 
are  to  be  found  on  German  steamers.  On  the  eighth 
day  out  on  the  Kaiserin  Angus te  Victoria  I  found  the 
salmon  as  fresh- tasting  as  if  it  had  just  been  caught. 


358  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

"How  do  you  do  it?"  I  asked  Captain  Ruser;  and  he 
explained  the  system — the  refrigerating  arrangements 
which,  with  steady  ventilation,  provide  a  frigid  atmos- 
phere without  actually  freezing  the  fish  or  the  meat. 

Such  things  cost  time  and  money;  but  the  Germans, 
being  a  gastronomic  nation,  consider  them  worth  while, 
on  sea  as  well  as  on  shore : 

Hamburg  sets  a  good  example  in  showing  what  a 
municipal  government  can  do  in  the  way  of  providing 
the  people  with  fresh  fish  and  telling  them  what  to  do 
with  them.  The  following  is  from  the  "Fremdenblatt" 
of  that  city;  similar  notices  frequently  appear  in  the 
newspapers : 

Sale  of  Cheap  Sea  Fish.  "The  Staatllche  Fischereldirek- 
tion"  informs  us  that  on  Tuesday,  August  20,  there  will  be 
on  sale,  at  the  known  150  shops,  fresh  haddocks — averaging  | 
pound  apiece — at  23  pfennigs  [5}  cents]  a  pound.  Besides 
this,  many  shops  offer  for  sale  fresh  mackerel  at  twenty  to 
twenty-five  pfennigs  [5  to  61  cents]  apiece,  according  to  size. 
The  mackerel  is  an  excellent  fish  both  for  frying  and  boiling. 
New  directions  for  cooking  haddock  in  a  variety  of  ways  are 
contained  in  the  illustrated  booklet,  "Fischkost,"  which  is  given 
free  to  purchasers  at  all  the  stalls. 

The  Hamburgers  are  lucky  in  having  the  "net  gains" 
of  sea  fishing  placed  before  them  at  the  earliest  possible 
moment.  With  the  aid  of  the  arrangements  just  re- 
ferred to  these  fishes  can,  however,  be  bought  in  good 
condition  as  far  away  as  Vienna.     A  few  years  ago  the 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     359 

Austrian  officials  had  a  number  of  railway  cars  con- 
structed for  the  transportation  of  sea  fish  and  also  of 
live  fresh-water  fish.  Germany  has  had  such  cars  for 
decades,  bringing  fish  not  only  from  her  own  ports  but 
from  Holland  and  elsewhere.  African  eels  are  sent 
from  Algiers  to  Marseilles  and  thence  by  express  trains 
all  the  way  to  Berlin. 

Eels  are  usually  despised  in  America  and  with  good 
reason,  for  their  scavenging  habits  often  make  them 
inedible.  But  there  are  eels  that  live  on  fresh  food, 
such  as  small  crustaceans  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  and 
fish  roe;  and  these  are  as  good  as  any  fish  that  swims. 
The  large  eels  served  in  Berlin  are  as  tender,  juicy,  and 
sweet-flavored  as  shad.  When  I  was  a  student  at  the 
University  of  Berlin,  one  of  my  pet  excursions  was  up 
the  Spree,  stopping  at  an  inn  where  eels  of  medium  size 
— blau  gesotten,  were  served  as  a  specialty.  They  were 
delicious,  though  they  did  look  strikingly  like  snakes 
as  they  lay  curled  up  on  the  plate  swallowing  their  own 
tails. 

Not  a  few  persons  whose  education  has  been  ne- 
glected refuse  to  eat  eels,  believing  them  to  be  allied 
to  snakes,  when  in  truth  they  are  no  more  related  to 
snakes,  zoologically,  than  whales  are.  And  even  if 
they  were  of  the  snake  family  what  of  it,  if  they  taste 
good*?  The  eminent  Norwegian  explorer.  Dr.  Lum- 
holtz,  who  spent  several  years  among  the  Australian 


36o  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

wild  men,  told  me  on  his  return,  while  we  were  enjoy- 
ing a  dish  of  terrapin  together  at  Henry  Villard's,  that 
much  as  he  liked  this  reptilian  delicacy,  of  which  we 
Americans  are  so  proud,  he  thought  that  python  liver, 
which  he  had  had  frequent  occasion  to  eat,  was  quite 
as  good. 

While  studying  at  Heidelberg  I  did  not  neglect,  it 
is  needless  to  say,  the  Wolfsbrunnen,  famous  for  its 
trout.  I  have  eaten  trout,  caught  by  myself  in  many 
parts  of  the  world,  including  the  Maine  woods.  Lake 
Tahoe  in  California,  and  Trout  Lake  in  the  State  of 
Washington;  but  none  tasted  better  than  a  dish  served 
in  Berlin  at  a  sumptuous  new  hotel  oddly  called  Board- 
ing Palace. 

All  over  Germany  fish-breeding  in  ponds  is  an  im- 
portant industry.  Bavaria  alone  had,  in  1909,  over 
33,000  acres  of  such  ponds,  and  probably  has  many 
more  now;  Saxony  had  200,000  acres,  while  Silesia  had 
nearly  60,000.  The  total  area  of  fish  ponds  in  the 
Empire  probably  does  not  fall  far  short  of  a  quarter  of 
a  million  acres. 

Carp  are  grown  in  special  abundance,  and  German 
carp  are  very  good  to  eat,  especially  when  they  have 
been  artificially  fed  and  fattened  with  rice,  potatoes, 
fish  meal,  or  dairy  refuse. 

Other  kinds  grown  are  perch,  pike-perch,  tench,  eels, 
and  trout  of  several  kinds,   including  the  American 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     361 

rainbow.  The  trout  are  fed  shellfish,  slaughterhouse 
refuse,  horse  meat,  fish  meal,  and  specially  prepared 
foods. 

Everything  is  done  with  German  thoroughness,  and 
the  results  once  more  prove  gastronomy  to  be  a  good 
guide  to  wealth. 

The  profits  are  increased  by  selling  the  fish  direct 
to  consumers.  Fish-growing  associations  have  been 
formed  for  this  special  purpose  all  over  the  empire. 

As  these  ponds  are  scattered  all  over  the  country  it 
is  possible  to  have  everywhere  fish  just  out  of  the 
water;  and,  as  I  have  said  before,  the  poorest  variety 
of  fish  just  caught  has  a  finer  Flavor  than  the  best  va- 
riety that  has  been  kept  a  few  days  by  any  method 
whatever.  I  have  lived  in  Germany  three  years  and 
do  not  remember  ever  to  have  had  on  my  plate 
insipid  fish,  such  as  we  are  doomed  three  times  out 
of  four  to  eat  in  our  own  country,  chiefly  because  the 
fish  are  frozen. 

Dr.  Wiley  insists  in  his  "Foods  and  Their  Adultera- 
tion" (1911)  that  "the  consumer  is  entitled  to  know 
whether  in  any  given  case  the  fish  he  purchases  is  a 
fresh  or  a  cold  storage  article.  At  the  present  time, 
in  so  far  as  I  know,  there  are  no  national,  state  or 
municipal  laws  whereby  this  fact  can  be  ascertained. 
Without  raising  the  question  of  comparative  value  or 
palatability  there  is  no  doubt  but  what  the  consumer  is 


362  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

entitled  to  know  the  character  of  the  fish  he  purchases." 
Big  Frauds  in  Fish:  Under  this  head  the  "Na- 
tional Food  Magazine"  of  Chicago  has  published  some 
remarks  by  G.  J.  L.  Janes,  which  vividly  depict  the 
outrages  perpetrated  in  the  United  States  by  cold- 
storage  men. 

"The  legal  regulations  governing  the  sale  of  fish 
are  so  lax  that  we  have  decided  to  stop  handling  fresh 
fish  altogether  rather  than  suffer  the  unjust  competition 
and  be  a  party  to  so  many  deceptions  on  the  public.  A 
dealer  can  take  any  kind  of  frozen  fish,  thaw  it  out,  and 
mark  it  strictly  fresh-caught  fish,  and  if  he  so  desire, 
sell  it  as  such.  This  is  being  done  all  along  State  Street 
in  Chicago  to-day.  It  is  not  only  a  fraud  and  cheat 
on  the  public,  but  it  is  dangerous.  Fresh-caught  hali- 
but costs  12  cents  a  pound  wholesale.  There  is  20  per 
cent,  waste  in  it,  because  of  the  fins,  skin,  etc.,  and 
hence  we  have  to  add  20  per  cent,  to  the  cost  in  order 
to  break  even  on  it.  Nevertheless  certain  stores  are 
advertising  strictly  fresh-caught  halibut  at  loj  cents  a 
pound  retail.  Of  course  this  is  frozen  halibut  they  are 
selling.  That  can  be  bought  at  8  cents  a  pound  whole- 
sale. The  same  is  true  of  other  fishes,  especially  white 
fish.  That  costs  22  cents  a  pound  when  fresh.  Cer- 
tain stores  advertise  "fancy  white-fish  winter  caught" 
at  10  cents  retail.  There  is  no  mention  of  its  being 
frozen  or  cold  storage  fish,  and  so  the  public  is  deceived, 
//  is  dangerous  economy  to  buy  cheap  fish.     No  other 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     363 

food  deteriorates  so  rapidly  after  it  comes  from  the 
water.  Especially  is  this  true  of  white  fish,  which 
spoils  quickest  of  all.  Freezing  breaks  up  the  tissues^ 
and  when  it  once  is  thawed  it  decomposes  with  enor- 
mous rapidity." 

As  long  as  the  American  public  patiently  tolerates 
such  impositions  on  purse  and  stomach  it  seems  hardly 
worth  while  to  discuss  the  more  subtle  gastronomic 
problems,  such  as  the  question  put  by  Dr.  Wiley: 
"Whether  or  not  the  flavor  and  character  of  the  flesh 
are  impaired  by  the  suffocation  process  subsequent  to 
the  capture  of  the  fish."  Undoubtedly  fish  is  best  when 
killed  the  instant  it  leaves  the  water,  and  then  at  once 
eviscerated  and  cleaned. 

When  we  have  become  sufficiently  civilized  to  insist 
on  such  measures  being  taken,  attention  will  be  paid  to 
the  suggestions  of  the  Danish  fisheries  agent,  Captain 
A.  Soiling,  communicated  to  the  "Daily  Consular  and 
Trade  Reports"  by  Consul-General  Wallace  C.  Bond, 
of  Copenhagen.  Captain  Soiling  recommends  that  the 
fish,  at  least  the  better  kinds,  be  cut  while  yet  alive, 
promptly  cleaned,  and  then  wrapped  in  specially  pre- 
pared paper  which  would  prevent  its  coming  in  direct 
contact  with  the  chopped  ice.  The  objection  may  be 
raised,  he  admits,  that  this  way  of  treating  fish  is  too 
particular  and  takes  too  long;  but  the  increased  work 
and  the  increased  expense  will,  he  feels  sure,  soon  be 
offset  by  the  higher  price  secured  on  account  of  the  bet- 


364  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

ter  preservation  of  the  fish;  and  "the  intelligent  fish- 
monger will  soon  discover  the  advantage  of  handling 
fish,  which  if  not  sold  to-day,  may  be  sold  in  3,  4  or  8 
days  and  still  be  equally  good  and  fresh." 

Progress  along  this  line  of  gastronomic  civilization 
will  be  a  boon  to  the  American  farmer.  There  are  tens 
of  thousands  of  lakelets  and  ponds  in  our  country,  most 
of  which  might  be  used  for  fish  culture.  They  will  be 
so  used  by  farmers  as  soon  as  we  have  learned  the  lesson 
the  German  ponds  teach,  and  stopped  buying  the  fla- 
vorless frozen  stuff  sold  in  our  fish  markets. 

In  Switzerland  there  has  been  formed  a  Fish-Grow- 
ers' Association  for  the  enlightenment  of  the  land  own- 
ers. Its  motto  is:  "Every  Farmer  a  Fish  Pond 
Owner."  Attention  is  called  to  the  demonstrated  fact 
that  an  acre  of  fish  pond  is  more  profitable  than  the 
same  area  devoted  to  the  ordinary  farm  crops. 

GAME    AND    GEESE. 

The  same  care  that  the  Germans  show  in  the  growing 
and  transportation  of  fish  is  also  manifested  in  their 
treatment  of  game. 

During  the  automobile  tour  across  Germany  to  which 
reference  has  been  made,  we  purposely  stopped,  as  a 
rule,  at  the  smaller  towns  and  taverns ;  but  everywhere, 
without  advance  notice,  we  had  excellent  food.  I  had 
previously  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  average  Ger- 
man restaurant  serves  nearly  if  not  quite  as  good  meals 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     365 

as  the  average  French  restaurant,  at  least  in  the 
provinces. 

It  was  game  season,  and  everywhere  we  were  able 
to  get  partridges — plump  young  birds,  juicy,  and 
cooked  scientifically,  at  about  one-third  American 
prices. 

Hares  and  rabbits  are  a  German  specialty,  and 
Hasenriicken  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the  undrawn 
rabbit  abomination  sold  in  American  markets.  The 
Californian  cottontail  is  the  nearest  approach  we  have 
to  the  Teutonic  hare.  I  shot  dozens  of  them  in  Los 
Angeles  County  one  winter  and  found  them  as  tender 
and  almost  as  well  flavored  as  young  chicken. 

Venison  is  seldom  to  be  had  in  our  markets  and  usu- 
ally only  at  fancy  prices.  In  German  restaurants  it 
is  as  cheap  as  beef;  sometimes  cheaper.  The  back — 
Rehriicken — costs  a  trifle  more,  and  is  better  than  the 
rest  of  the  meat,  which  is  usually  served  roasted  or  as 
a  ragout;  but  all  is  good.  It  seems  to  be  a  specialty 
of  the  Rhine  boats. 

Other  game  also  is  abundant  and  cheap,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  the  greed  for  sport  is  regulated  by 
severe  laws  which  are  strictly  enforced.  We,  too,  now 
have  game  laws  in  most  of  our  States,  but  they  are 
seldom  enforced  effectively  and  most  of  them,  more- 
over, were  made  on  the  principle  of  locking  the  stable 
door  after  the  horse  has  been  stolen. 

Africa  is  at  present  the  scene  of  ruthless  slaughter  of 


366  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

game,  big  and  little,  but  at  its  worst  it  is  not  often  so 
reckless,  extravagant,  and  wasteful  as  the  hideous  car- 
nage of  which  Americans  have  been  guilty.  Time  was 
when  wild  pigeons  blackened  the  sky  and  were  slain 
by  the  hundreds  with  poles.  Wild  turkeys  inhabited 
every  thicket  and  could  be  bought  for  twenty  cents 
apiece — they  are  twice  as  much  a  pound  now,  though 
seldom  on  sale  at  any  price.  Ruffled  grouse  were  so 
plentiful  that  a  bounty  was  offered  for  their  extermina- 
tion, their  abundance  being  a  menace  to  the  crops.  To- 
day you  pay  $5  for  a  brace  of  these  birds.  Deer,  until 
lately,  were  killed  for  their  haunches,  the  rest  being 
left  for  beasts  of  prey;  while  millions  of  buffaloes  were 
slaughtered  for  their  tongues  and  hides — often  for  the 
tongues  alone. 

The  Audubon  Society,  aided  by  generous  donors  and, 
to  some  extent,  by  the  Government,  has  done  royal 
service  to  protect  game  and  song  birds.  The  intelli- 
gent sporting  clubs  are  lending  useful  aid,  while  the 
Yellowstone  Park  has  been  set  aside  as  a  great  game 
preserve.  Unfortunately,  although  the  animals  are 
safe  from  guns  while  they  remain  in  the  Park,  thou- 
sands are  slaughtered  in  winter  when  hunger  drives 
them  outside  its  limits,  while  many  thousands  more 
perish  because  no  provision  is  made  for  feeding  these 
poor  wards  of  the  Government. 

A  pathetic  picture  is  printed  in  Dillon  Wallace's 
splendid  book,   "Saddle  and  Camp  in  the  Rockies." 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     367 

It  tells  a  sad  story.  One  settler  told  him  there  had 
been  times  when  he  could  walk  half  a  mile  on  the 
bodies  of  dead  elk.  Instead  of  helping  its  wards, 
the  Federal  Government  actually  gave  permits  to 
sheepmen  which  would  have  devastated  the  last 
refuge  of  the  elks.  The  settlers  saved  the  situation  by 
holding  an  indignation  meeting.  "The  sheepmen  saw 
the  point — and  the  rope — and  discreetly  departed." 

In  Germany  the  game  animals  are  cared  for  in  win- 
ter. While  visiting  Mark  Twain's  daughter  and  her 
husband,  the  eminent  pianist-composer,  Ossip  Gabri- 
lowitsch,  in  the  Bavarian  Highlands,  in  the  summer 
of  1912,  we  met  at  their  house  a  young  tenor  who 
was  also  a  mighty  hunter  before  the  Lord.  He  gave 
us  an  account  of  the  game  laws  and  the  general  ar- 
rangements for  preservation  and  multiplication,  which 
convinced  us  that  if  we  are  to  retrieve  the  errors  and 
crimes  of  our  predecessors.  East  and  West,  we  must 
follow  the  example  of  Germany. 

Pointing  to  the  meadows  round  about,  he  explained 
that  the  hay  made  on  these  is  preserved  and  fed  to  the 
deer  in  winter.  Often  one  may  see  as  many  as  a  hun- 
dred at  a  time  assembling  for  their  daily  meal,  and 
people  come  all  the  way  from  Munich  to  see  them  at  it. 

As  it  had  been  found  that  too  much  hay  or  other 
dry  food  was  not  good  for  the  deer,  the  owners  of 
private  game  preserves,  of  which  there  are  many,  have 
taken  to  planting  beets,  turnips  or  potatoes,  which  re- 


368  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

main  in  the  ground  till  the  animals  dig  them  out  from 
under  the  snow  and  soil. 

A  suggestive  detail  regarding  the  protection  of  birds 
is  that  thickets,  bristling  with  thorns,  are  specially  pro- 
vided to  help  them  during  nesting  time  and  when  pur- 
sued by  birds  or  beasts  of  prey.  The  clearing  away  of 
thickets  in  America  has  done  almost  as  much  as  actual 
slaughter  in  exterminating  birds.  Lovers  of  song 
birds  as  well  as  epicures  who  like  game  for  a  change 
would  unite  in  blessing  our  railway  campanies  if  they 
followed  the  German  example  of  planting  shrubs  as 
homes  for  birds  all  along  the  railroad  embankments. 

While  the  Germans  are  fond  of  partridges  and  other 
game  birds,  their  favorite  food,  so  far  as  the  feathered 
tribes  are  concerned,  is  the  domesticated  goose.  In  the 
markets,  especially  of  the  northern  cities,  more  geese  are 
exposed  for  sale  than  all  other  kinds  of  poultry  com- 
bined, and  in  restaurants  Gdnsebraten  is  seldom  absent 
from  the  menu.  The  French  rather  look  down  on 
roast  goose,  but  that  is  because  their  roast  goose  is  not 
so  juicy  and  tender  as  the  Prussian,  whether  owing  to  a 
difference  in  variety  or  rearing  I  cannot  tell. 

The  Germans  are  most  painstaking  in  the  growing 
and  the  proper  feeding  of  this  bird.  They  know  that 
corn  fodder  yields  the  largest  amount  of  fat — and  goose 
fat  is  much  in  demand — while  the  finest  Flavor  is  se- 
cured by  feeding  barley  malt. 

The  best  goose,  like  the  best  beef,  is  grown  where 


Peer  in  German  Forest 


370  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

there  is  abundant  pasturage.  There  is  less  of  this  in 
the  Empire  than  there  used  to  be,  hence  large  numbers 
of  geese  are  imported.  From  six  to  seven  millions  of 
them  are  annually  brought  across  the  border,  mostly 
from  Russia.  Every  day,  a  special  "goose  train,"  con- 
sisting of  from  fifteen  to  forty  cars  crosses  the  Russian 
frontier  bound  for  Berlin  or  Strassburg. 

Strassburg  is  one  of  the  many  cities  that  were  made 
famous  by  a  special  food.  Goose  liver  was  already 
relished  as  a  great  delicacy  by  the  ancient  Romans; 
Horace  refers  in  one  of  his  poems  to  the  joys  of  eat- 
ing the  liver  of  the  white  goose  fattened  with  juicy  figs. 
In  Strassburg,  unfortunately,  the  geese  are  not  fattened 
with  figs,  but  are  locked  up  in  cages  and  stuffed  for  a 
number  of  days  with  shelled  corn  or  noodles  till  their 
overworked  livers  become  abnormally  enlarged,  after 
which  they  are  made  into  what  is  known  the  world  over 
as  ''pate  de  foie  gras.  This  mixture  of  liver,  meat  and 
truffles  is  now  prepared  on  a  large  scale  also  in  Tou- 
louse and  other  French  places,  but  the  headquarters 
for  it  is  Alsace,  where  it  is  made  in  many  places,  though 
it  is  said  that  there  is  a  growing  opposition  to  it  on  ac- 
count of  the  cruelty  inseparable  from  the  stuffing  proc- 
ess. It 's  a  great  pity  that  such  cruelty  should  be 
necessary,  for  not  a  few  epicures  feel  like  the  Rev.  Syd- 
ney Smith,  who  exclaimed:  "My  idea  of  heaven  is 
eating  foies  gras  to  the  sound  of  trumpets." 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES    371 

IN  A  BERLIN   MARKET. 

That  the  goose  is  the  food  of  the  day  and  every  day 
is  made  manifest  in  the  markets  of  Berlin,  of  which 
there  are  more  than  a  dozen.  All  the  poultry  stalls 
are  filled  with  them,  so  much  so  that  other  meat,  even 
the  ever-present  veal,  shrinks  timidly  into  the  back- 
ground. 

Wherever  one  stops,  the  displays  are  most  attrac- 
tive. There  are  unfrozen,  fresh-killed  meats  of  all 
kinds,  tempting  even  the  sightseer  who  has  no  inten- 
tion of  buying.  Autumn  flowers,  and  large  boxes  of 
deep  red  Freisselbeeren — a  berry  very  similar  to  the 
mountain  cranberry  found  on  Maine's  highest  peaks, 
and  growing  everywhere  in  Germany  (it  ought  to  be 
acclimated  in  our  fields) — give  rich  autumnal  hues  to 
many  of  the  market  stalls,  while  the  fragrance  of 
Gravenstein  apples  fills  the  air  near  the  fruit  stalls. 

As  in  Paris,  the  sea  fish  are  fresh-caught,  with  ice 
about  them,  but  never  frozen,  while  fresh-water  fish 
are  carried  to  the  buyer's  house  in  a  tank  and  selected 
alive.  The  German  krebs,  or  craw-fish,  is  almost  as 
much  in  evidence  as  the  French  ecrevisses,  and  like 
these,  it  is  kept  in  tanks  of  cold,  running  water,  except 
for  a  few  boxfuls,  the  probable  supply  of  the  day, 
which  are  sorted  out  by  sizes  for  convenience.  "Solo- 
krebs"  is  one  of  the  items  on  a  Berlin  menu,  and  means 
one  huge  fellow,  almost  as  big  as  a  small  lobster. 


372  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

This  Berlin  market,  unlike  the  Halles  of  Paris,  does 
not  encroach  on  and  beautify  the  surrounding  streets. 
It  is  orderly  and  law-abiding,  and  fills  up  its  allotted 
space  of  two  covered  squares  to  the  limit,  but  with  no 
overflow.  However,  the  shops  nearby  are  generally 
for  foods,  with  appetizing  windows  of  sausages, 
smoked  meats  and  fish,  or  cheeses. 

An  oddity  of  this  market  is  that  the  upper  floor  space 
is  divided  about  equally  between  fruits  and  household 
furnishings.  There  is  an  exhaustless  supply  of  step- 
ladders,  and  besides  these,  every  need  of  the  kitchen  is 
provided  for. 

Meat  prices,  which  soar  in  Berlin,  are  much  lower 
in  the  big  markets  than  elsewhere. 

Any  one  coming  directly  from  the  United  States, 
where  the  veal  is  seldom  so  good  as  the  lamb  or  the 
beef  is  sure  to  wonder  at  the  abundance  of  calves  in 
German  markets.  After  sampling  the  veal  a  few 
times,  one  ceases  to  wonder  why  the  Germans  are  so 
addicted  to  it,  and  the  Austrians  no  less  so.  The 
French  know  how  to  cook  veal,  and  a  good  cutlet  a  la 
Milanaise  is  not  to  be  despised,  but  there  is  nothing 
in  its  way  as  good  as  the  Wiener  Schnitzel  or  the  Ger- 
man Kalhshraten, 

The  excellence  of  German  veal  is  due  largely  to  the 
strict  exclusion  from  the  markets  by  the  meat  inspectors 
of  all  animals  that  are  too  young  or  too  old,  the  Flavor 
as  well  as  the  tenderness  of  the  meat  being  largely  de- 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     373 

pendent  on  the  right  age  for  slaughtering  the  calf. 
The  calves  are,  moreover,  milkfed  and  not  brought  up 
on  "hay-tea." 

VIENNA    BREAD   AND    HUNGARIAN    FLOUR. 

While  Parisian  bread  is  as  good  as  bread  can  be, 
it  cannot  be  said  that  French  bread,  the  country 
through,  is  so  uniformly  excellent  as  is  German  bread, 
throughout  the  two  Empires.  Not  only  in  Vienna, 
Berlin,  Munich,  Dresden,  Hamburg,  Stuttgart,  and 
the  other  large  cities  is  it  almost  invariably  crisp  and 
tasty,  but  it  is  so  in  the  smaller  towns  and  even  the 
villages. 

EUwanger  does  not  exaggerate  when  he  says  in  re- 
gard to  Germany  that  "from  her  inviting  B acker eis 
and  Conditoreis  floats  an  ambrosial  fragrance  that  may 
not  be  equaled  by  the  patisseries  of  Paris,  the  variety 
of  her  products  being  as  great  as  their  cheapness  and 
wholesomeness.  One  is  born  a  poet,  saith  the  adage; 
it  is  equally  true  that  the  German  is  a  born  baker  who 
has  no  superior  in  his  sphere." 

The  Parisians,  indeed,  learned  the  secret  of  making 
perfect  bread  from  the  Austrians. 

Bread  was  baked  by  Egyptians  and  Hebrews  two 
thousand  years  before  Christ;  also  by  the  Greeks,  from 
whom  the  Italians  learned  the  art  of  making  it.  There 
are  records  of  Roman  bakers  who  became  so  wealthy 
and  famous  that  they  were  invested  with  the  dignity 


374  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

of  Senators,  but  there  are  reasons  for  believing  that  if 
any  bakers  of  our  time  endeavored  to  sell  the  sour 
stuff  these  Romans  made,  they  would  be  mobbed. 

Eugen  Baron  Vaerst  relates  that  a  jury  of  French, 
English,  and  Italian  epicures  decided  that  the  best 
pastry  was  made  in  Switzerland  (Schweizerbackerei 
has  been  famous  for  more  than  a  century)  and  the  best 
bread  in  Vienna.  The  Austrians  may  have  got  some 
hints  from  the  Venetians,  who  made  good  bread  and 
excellent  hiscotti.  In  consequence  of  that  jury's  de- 
cision, an  enterprising  baker  set  up  a  shop  on  the  Boule- 
vard Bonne  Nouvelle,  and  "the  Parisians,  proud  to 
have  all  that  was  best  in  different  countries  taken  to 
them  for  their  verdict  and  approval,  decided  that  this 
was  the  best  bonne  nouvelle  that  had  ever  been  brought 
to  them." 

This  baker  soon  became  wealthy  and  so  did  others 
who  followed  his  example.  To  this  day  pain  viennois 
is  in  the  best  repute  in  Paris,  and  so  is  Viennese  pastry. 

Most  juries  of  epicures  would  agree  to-day  that  not 
only  is  Viennese  bread  perfect  but  that,  next  to  Paris, 
the  Austrian  capital  has  the  best  restaurants,  and  the 
most  savory  domestic  cooking  in  the  world.  Many  of 
the  foods  served  have  local  Flavors,  not  the  least  agree- 
able of  which  are  those  betraying  the  neighborhood  of 
Hungary — the  Gulyas^  the  Paprikahuhn^  and  other 
dishes  reddened  and  made  piquant  with  paprika,  which 
must  not  be  confounded  with  the  much  sharper  variety 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     375 

of  red  pepper,  cayenne,  so  dear  to  Spanish  peoples  of 
the  old  world  and  the  new. 

A  specialty  of  the  Austrian  and  South-German  cui- 
sine, the  neglect  of  which  elsewhere  is  incomprehensi- 
ble, is  the  Mehlspeise^  which  ought  to  be  adopted  in 
England  and  America  as  an  occasional  substitute  for 
puddings  and  pies.  There  is  an  endless  variety  of 
these  Mehlspeisen^  under  the  species  Nudeln^  Spatzen^ 
Kipferl^  Kuchen^  Strudel^  Nockerl^  Flocked^  Knodel^ 
Schmarren,  Really,  the  Kaiserschmarren  and  the  Ap- 
felstrudel  ought  to  be  adopted  as  national  American 
dishes  by  special  act  of  Congress. 

Flavorsome  Hungarian  flour  {MehV)  is  used  in  mak- 
ing these  dishes  {Speisen)  and  that  is  one  of  the  reasons 
why  they  are  so  good.  The  Hungarian  brand  of  flour 
is  the  best  in  the  world,  especially  the  highest  grade, 
known  as  Auszugmehl.  It  has  an  amber  tint  known 
among  bakers  as  the  gelbliche  Stick.  On  account  of 
its  agreeable  Flavor,  Hungarian  flour  is  sent  in  large 
quantities  to  Germany,  and  some  goes  as  far  as  Paris. 
Because  of  the  freight  expenses  it  is  not  usually  sent 
north  of  Berlin.  In  that  city  the  best  bread  is  made 
of  it,  including  the  favorite  Kniippel  and  the  Milch- 
hrode.  Farther  north,  a  mixture  of  German  and 
American  flour  is  used. 

A  few  American  grocers  import  Hungarian  flour. 
The  test  of  the  best  European  product  is  that  when  the 
hand  is  laid  on  it,  it  flies  up  between  the  fingers. 


376  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

American  flour  packs.  Mrs.  Arpad  Gerster  (whose 
husband  is  a  brodier  of  the  famous  Hungarian  prima 
donna,  Etelka  Gerster)  gives  me  the  very  important 
information  that  our  flour  can  be  made  almost  equal 
to  the  foreign  by  drying  it  on  a  platter  on  top  of  the 
stove.  Bread,  cakes,  noodles,  etc.,  made  with  flour 
thus  dried  have  the  much-coveted  European  lightness. 

The  Germans  know  as  well  as  the  French  that  the 
crust  is  the  sweetest  and  most  digestible  part  of  bread 
and  that  its  Flavor  depends  on  there  being  a  maximum 
of  crust  with  a  minimum  of  crumb,  quite  as  much  as  it 
does  on  the  grade  of  flour  used,  and  the  method  of 
making  the  dough  and  baking  it.  To  ensure  a  maxi- 
mum of  crust,  white  bread  is  usually  baked  in  the  size 
of  rolls,  as  Semmel^  and  in  a  great  variety  of  other 
shapes,  every  region  having  its  specialty. 

While  it  is  true  that,  as  a  German  writer  remarks, 
the  eating  of  white  bread  is  a  mark  of  prosperity  in 
his  country,  it  must  not  be  inferred  that  it  is  only  the 
poorer  classes  who  buy  the  cheaper  Schwarzbrod^  made 
of  rye.  On  account  of  its  agreeable  flavor  this  "black- 
bread"  appeals  particularly  to  epicures,  and  the  darkest 
variety  of  it.  Pumpernickel,  is  called  for  by  gourmets 
the  world  over  as  the  best  thing  to  eat  with  cheeses  of 
the  Limburger  type.  It  is  also  used  as  an  ingredient 
in  various  Mehlspeisen  and  cremes.  It  is  made  of 
flour  from  which  the  bran  has  not  been  bolted. 

Cereal  perfumery  is  not  a  thing  you  can  buy  at  an 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     377 

apothecary's.  You  get  it  by  munching  a  piece  of  rye 
bread  with  fresh  butter  on  it  and  consciously  breathing 
out  through  the  nose. 

In  France  rye  bread  is  almost  unknown.  In  Eng- 
land attempts  were  made  a  few  years  ago  to  popularize 
it.  Nature  and  other  periodicals  took  up  the  matter, 
which  had  been  brought  to  the  fore  during  a  political 
campaign  where  some  of  the  speakers  deplored  the  lot 
of  the  German  laboring  man  for  being  obliged  to  eat 
rye  bread.  By  way  of  reply,  attention  was  called  to 
the  fact  that  the  Kaiser  himself  always  has  rye  bread 
on  his  table,  and  that  in  American  cities,  as  in  those  of 
Germany,  there  is  much  demand  for  such  bread  in  the 
wealthy  quarters.  Apparently  the  attempt  to  enrich 
the  British  menu  with  a  cheap  new  delicacy  failed,  for 
trade  reports  of  1912  intimated  that  while  there  is  at 
all  times  a  demand  for  com  and  oats  on  the  Liverpool 
market,  rye  does  not  find  sale  there. 

There  are  many  other  German  bread  and  cake 
specialties  that  deserve  to  be  introduced  in  other 
countries.  Two  of  them  are  already  known  to  epicures 
of  many  countries :  the  Lebkuchen^  or  honeycake,  which 
made  Nuremburg  famous,  and  the  lye-soaked,  twisted, 
crisp  FretzeL  This  has  a  little  salt  strewn  on  the 
crust  and  the  same  is  true  of  other  kinds  of  small 
breads.  Particularly  good  is  the  Mohnhrot,  which  is 
peppered  with  poppy  seeds.  Try  it.  Poppy  seed  is 
as  good  to  eat  as  any  nut  that  grows. 


378  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

In  these  things  the  Germans  show  a  good  deal  of 
imagination ;  but  as  for  the  anise-seeds  so  often  mingled 
with  the  rye  bread,  I  wish  they  would  leave  them  to 
the  imagination.  The  general  use  of  them  has  proba- 
bly done  more  than  anything  else  to  prevent  the  ac- 
ceptance of  German  rye  bread  in  foreign  countries. 

GERMAN    MENUS   ON    SEA   AND    LAND. 

The  Germans  claim  that  the  custom  of  providing 
a  written  or  printed  menu,  or  Speisenkarte,  originated 
in  their  country. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Reichstag  in  Regensburg,  in 
1541,  Count  Hugo  of  Montfort  noticed  one  day  at  a 
banquet  that  the  host,  Duke  Heinrich  von  Braun- 
schweig, had  before  him  a  ZetteU  or  slip  of  paper,  which 
he  glanced  at  now  and  then.  Being  questioned,  the 
Duke  replied  that  it  was  a  list  of  the  dishes  that  were 
to  be  served,  made  for  him  by  the  chef  so  that  he  might 
save  his  appetite  for  those  which  he  liked  best. 

Whether  true  or  not,  the  story  gives  the  raison 
d'etre  for  a  menu  at  every  table-d'hote  meal.  It 
is  related  by  Friedrich  Baumann  in  his  Meisterwerk 
der  Speisen^  a  monumental  work  in  two  volumes,  of 
over  two  thousand  pages,  to  which  brief  reference  has 
already  been  made.  Baumann  has  been  called  the 
German  Careme  (who  was  "the  Luther  of  the 
French  cuisine").  To  him  cooking  was  not  mere 
handwork;  it  was  an  art  and  a  science;  and  in  his  work 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     379 

he  not  only  enumerates  and  briefly  describes  the  foods 
of  all  countries  (for  example,  of  fishes,  and  dishes 
made  thereof,  there  are  about  twenty-five  hundred!), 
but  treats  of  everything  pertaining  to  the  growing,  cook- 
ing, and  serving  of  victuals  with  true  German  thorough- 
ness and  with  hundreds  of  those  footnotes  which  are 
accepted  in  that  country  as  the  best  evidence  of  scholar- 
ship. 

Of  all  the  German  cities  none  is  visited  by  more 
American  and  English  tourists  than  Munich;  and  few 
of  these  fail  to  go  and  see  the  Court  Brewery,  even 
though  they  may  not  wish  to  try  the  beer — the  best 
in  the  world.  You  may  eat  at  the  Hofbrauhaus  with- 
out drinking  anything,  though  you  will  be  stared  at 
as  a  freak.  There  are  several  large  dining-rooms  and 
the  bill  of  fare  is  large,  varied,  and  thoroughly  Ger- 
man. Look  at  the  soups,  for  instance:  bouillon  with 
egg,  bread  soup,  noodle  soup  with  or  without  a  large 
chunk  of  boiled  chicken,  which  adds  sixteen  cents  to 
the  price,  liver-noodle  soup,  and  brain  soup.  All 
are  nutritious  and  tasty  and  cost  only  four  or  five 
cents  a  big  plate.  The  fishes  offered  on  this  partic- 
ular day  in  September  are  carp,  pike,  sand-eel  from 
the  Danube,  and  perch-pike.  These  cost  from  about 
27  to  32  cents  a  generous  portion.  Ochsenfleisch 
— boiled  beef — is  always  in  great  demand  and  is 
usually  juicy  and  well-flavored.  Without  vegeta- 
bles it  costs  only  12  cents  a  plate.     Five  different  cuts 


38o  FOODANDFLAVOR 

of  veal  open  the  list  of  roasts,  and  the  same  price  is 
charged  for  them — 17  cents — though  in  other  restau- 
rants the  kidney  piece  often  costs  a  few  cents  more. 
Pork  is  two  cents  and  a  half  higher,  while  chicken, 
goose,  and  pigeon  may  rise  to  the  dizzy  heights  of  32 
cents  a  plate. 

Among  the  day's  ready  dishes — Fertige  Speisen — 
we  note  haunch  of  venison  at  35  cents  and  leg  of 
venison  for  five  cents  less.  Half  a  partridge  is  listed 
at  24  cents,  and  the  same  charge  is  made  for  a  quarter 
of  a  wild  duck.  There  is  of  course  a  Sauerbraten — a 
sort  of  boeuf  a  la  mode  with  a  palatable  sour  sauce — 
and  you  may  choose  boeuf  braise,  or  Greek  steak,  or 
various  mutton  dishes,  smoked  meats,  and  so  on,  the 
prices  for  these  being  about  22  to  24  cents,  including 
a  vegetable:  cabbage,  potatoes,  beans,  or  rice,  noodles, 
dumplings  (Bavarian  liver-dumplings — Leberknodel — 
are  fine!)  or  macaroni  with  minced  ham,  which  ought 
to  be  on  every  table  in  every  country  at  least  two  or 
three  times  a  week. 

The  roasts  and  fries  to  order  include,  of  course,  the 
Wiener  Schnitzel  (savory  when  you  have  German  or 
Austrian  veal)  the  Paprikas chnitzel  and  various  other 
cuts  from  the  calf  or  the  ox.  Kompotts  are  in  Ger- 
many served  with  roasts  as  regularly  as  salads  are  in 
France ;  they  are  stewed  fruits — apples,  pears,  apricots, 
cherries,  and  berries  among  which  the  Preisselbeere  is 
most  Teutonic  and  most  delicious. 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     381 

The  Mehlspeisen  on  this  particular  menu  are  fewer 
in  number  and  less  racy  of  the  soil  that  those  you 
would  find  on  a  Viennese  bill  of  fare.  Besides  the 
international  omelette  and  the  Italian  macaroni  there 
is  only  the  German  pancake  and  the  WindnudeL 
Among  the  vegetables  and  salads  are  listed,  rather 
out  of  place,  the  Spdtzl^  a  variety  of  the  noodles  which 
are  the  German  version  of  the  Italian  macaroni  and 
other  pastes,  and  which  only  a  German  knows  how  to 
cook  to  perfection.  A  glance  at  the  twenty-two  varie- 
ties of  cold  meats  and  appetizers  and  the  dozen  varie- 
ties of  cheese  brings  to  mind  the  international  aspect  of 
German  gastronomy. 

In  the  more  expensive  restaurants  of  Munich  and 
other  German  cities  the  French  influence  is  more 
obvious.  I  chose  the  menu  of  the  Hofbrauhaus  be- 
cause of  its  thoroughly  bourgeois  and  German  aspect. 

The  largest  restaurants  in  the  world  are  in  Berlin; 
one  of  them  seats  four  thousand  people.  In  the  bour- 
geois places  the  food  is  usually  less  savory  than  in  sim- 
ilar establishments  in  South  Germany,  but  there  is  a 
larger  proportion  of  the  high  and  highest  class  resorts, 
with  viands  and  prices  almost,  if  not  quite,  on  a  level 
with  those  of  Paris  and  London,  which  it  is  the  ambi- 
tion and  intention  of  the  Berliners  ultimately  to  sur- 
pass in  these  respects  as  well  as  in  the  splendors  of  their 
hotels. 

Another  German  ambition  is  to  have  the  largest 


Breakfast 


Fruit. 

Oranges,   Bananas,    Grape  Fruit,  Grapes 

Preserves 

Honey,  Strawberry  Marmalade,    Jams,    Quince  Jelly 
Sweet  Pickel  Peaclies,  Scotcii  Marmalade 

Coffee,  Tea,  etc. 

Coffee,    CoffeeYneless  Coffee  H.  A.  G.»    Cocoa,    Cfiocolate 
Ceylon  Tea,    Mixed  Tea,    Milk  and  Cream 

Bread 

Rolls,    Milk  and  Butter  Toast,    Toast  plain 
Various  Kinds  of  Cakes  and  Crackers 

Cereals 

Milk  Rice,    Oatmeal,    Hominy,    Force,    Shredded  Wheat,  Grape  Nuts 

Eggs,  Omelettes  and  Pancakes 

Buckwheat,  Hominy,  Rice  and  Wheat  Cakes, 

Pancakes  plain,  with  Apples  or  Cherries 

Apricot  or  Currant  Marmalade 

Potato  Pancakes, 

Boiled  Eggs,  Poached  Eggs.  Baked  Eggs 

Fried  Eggs  plain,  with  Bacon  or  k  la  Tyrollenne 

Scrambled  Eggs  plain,  with  Ham  or  h  la  Bavaroise 

Omelette  plain,    aux  fines  Herbes  or  with  Strawberries 

Fish,  Steaks,  Chops  etc. 

Kippered  Herrings,  Haddock,  Fish  Croquettes,  Sole,  Salted  Mackerels 

Fillet  Steak  Westmoreland,  Fillet  of  Veal  Esterhdzy 

Fillet  Gulyas  with  Mushrooms,    German  Beef  Steak 

Chicken  Liver  on  the  Spit  with  Pi^montaise   Rice 

Calf's  Liver  with  Apples  and  Onions,  Fried  Calf's  Brains  Sauce  R^moulade 

Grill:    Tenderloin  Steak,     Mutton  Chops,     Sirloinsteak,    Lamb  Kidneys, 

English  Ham,  Frankfort  Sausages 

Potatoes 

Boiled,    Fried,    Baked,     Mashed  Potatoes 
Saratoga  Chips,  French  Fried  Potatoes,  Lyonnaise  Potatoes 

Cold  Dishes 

Westphalian  Ham,  Smoked  Bologna  Sausages,  Smoked  Tongue 
Potted  Fieldfares  witl\  Truffles,  Roast   Beef,  Chicken 

JRelishes 

Eel  in  Jelly,  Oil  Sardines,  Anchovies,  Fillet  of  Herring  in  diverser   Sauce 

Cheese 

Camembert,  Herb,  Imperial,  Holland  Cheese 


GabeKFriihstCick  "  Lfuncheon 

&  la  carte. 


Vorspelsen 

Salai  de  BoluI  Parisienne 

KUken-Salat 

Geraucherter  Aal 

Royans  ^  la  Bordelaise 

Heringsfilet,  Remouladensauce 

Rollmops 

Anchovis 

Siippeii 

Huhner-Kraftbriihe  in  Tassen 
Schnttiscbe  Graupensuppe 
Kartoflelsuppe  mit  Croutons 

Fisch 

Gerosteter  Lachs,  Anchovisbulter/ 
Streifbarsch,  Sauce  Pluche 

Eierspeiseii 

Omelett  mit  Schnittlauch 

Spiegeleier  Othello 
Vcrloiene  Eier  Cardinal 

Fleischspeisen  und  GefHigel 

KUken  ill  Curry  und  Reis 
Kalbsleber  mit  Aepfein  und  Zwiebeln 

Kartoffelmus 
Zungenragout  Finan^ifere,  FJeurons 
Entre-cotes  h.  la  Mac^doine 

iuiigschweinskeule  deutsche  Art 
toastbref  au  Jus 

Biirgerliches  Gericht 

KIops  ^  la  Konigsberg 

Auf  Bestellung  (vom  Grill  15  Min  ) 

Hammelkoteletten,  Beefsteak 
Filetsteak,  Rumpsteak 

Getniise  und  Kartoffelii 

Brechspargel 

Perlbohncn 

Spaghetti  italienische  Art 

(iekochier  Reis 

Franzosische  und  deutsche  Bralkartoffein 

Kartoffelmus,  Gebackene  KartoHein 

Salate 

Kartoffelsalat,  Achanaka-Salat 

Kaltesr  Buffet 

Lammrucken  garniert 

Galantine  von  Poularde,Sauce  Cumberland 

Chaud-lroid  von  Reh  mit  Pilzen 

Tournedos  Jockey  Art 

Junge  Ente  in  Aspik 

Geraucherte  Zunge 

Gespicktes  Kalbsfrikandeau,  Roastbeef 

Kalles  GeflUgel 

Geraucherter  und  gekochter  Schinken 

Kompott  und  SuBspeisen 

Birnen 

Blanc-manger  mit  Friichten 

Schneeballe 

K3se 

Krauter-,  Schweizer-,  Camembert-Kase 
Prur.ht  Kaffee 


Hors  d*Oeuvres 

Salad  de  Boeuf  Parisienne 

Chicken  Salad 

Smoked  Eel 

Royans  ^  la  Bordelaise 

Fillet  of  Herrings,  Sauce  Remoulade 

Rolled  Pickled  Herrings 

Anchovies 

Soups 

Chicken  Broth  in  Cup 
Scotch  Barley  Soup 
Potato  Soup  with  Croutons 

Fish 

Broiled  Salmon,  Anchovy  Butter 
Striped  Bass,  Sauce  Pluche 

Eggs 

Omelet  with  Chive 
Fried  Eggs  Othello 
Poachea  Eggs  Cardinal 

Entrees,  Roasts  and  Poultry 

Curried  Chicken  with  Rice 
Calf's-liver  with  Apples  and  Onions 

Mashed  Potatoes 
Tongue  Ragout  Financi^re,  Fleurons 
Entre-cotes  h.  la  Mac^doine 
Leg  of  Pork,  German  Style 
Roastbeef  au  Jus 

Special  Dish 

KIops  a  la  Koenlgsberg 

To  Order  (from  the  Grill  15  min.) 

Mutton  Chops,  Beelsteak 
Tenderloin  Steak,  Sirloin  Steak 

Vegetables  and  Potaloes 

Cut  Asparagus 

String  Beans 

Spaghetti  Italienne 

Boiled  Rice 

French  and  German  fried  Potatoes 

Mashed  Potatoes,  Baked  Potatoes 

Salads 

Potato  Salad,  Salad  Achanaka 

Cold  Cuts  and  Cold  Dishes 

Saddle  of  Lamb  garnished 

Galantine  of  Pullet,  Sauce  Cumberland 

Chaud-froid  of  Venison,  Mushrooms 

TournedoS  ^  la  Jockey 

Duckling  in  Aspic 

Smoked  Tongue 

Larded  Roast  Veal,  Roastbeef 

Roast  Chicken 

Smoked  and  Boiled  Ham 

Compote  and  Desserts 

Pears 

Blanc-manger  with  Fruits 

Cream  Puffs 

Cheese 

Herb,  Swiss,  Camembert  Cheese 

fruit  Coffee 


384 


FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 


Table-stewards  and  stateroom-stewards 
take  orders  lor  dinner  at  any  time  during 
the  day. 


will     I 
ring     j 


Carte  dujour. 

ffors  d'Ocuvres: 
Hors  d'oeuvre  Vari^ 
Caprice  Sticks 

Soups: 
Consommd  Orimaldi 
Croam  Soup  i  la  d'Orl^ans 
Fieldlare  Soup  Old  Style 

Fish: 

Salmon  Cutlets  k  la  Count  d'Artois 
Sole  Meunifere 
Turbot,  Butler,  Parsley 

Entries: 
Fillet  of  Beel  Renaissance 
Lamb  Chops,  Sauce  Pdripueux 

Stuffed  Artithoke  Bottoms 
Croutons  of  Goose  Liver  Moderne  (cold) 
Broiled  Sweetbread,  Green  Peas 
Enlrccdtes  Jardinifere 
Leg  of  Lamb,  Larded,  Brussels  Sprout* 

Grill:  (15—30  min.): 

Mixed  Grill  consisting  ol: 
Fillet  Mignon,  Lamb  Chops 
Kidncv,  Sausage,  Tomato     „      .    „     , 
Tenderloin  Steak,  Entrecfite,  Sirloin  Steak 
Lamb  Chops,  Mutton  Chops 

Ready  Dishes: 
Prague  Ham  a  la  Fitz  lames 

Poultry : 

Cherbourg  Poularde 

Partiidge 
Vegetables: 

Pdim  Marrow  Bordelafse 

Peas  and  Asparagus,  Stew  Corn 
Boiled  Rice 

Frenrh  and  German  fried  Potatoes 
Mashed  Potatoes,  Baked  Potatoes 

Compote: 
Green  Gages,  Strawberries 

Salads: 
Lettuce  Salad 
Endive  Salad 

Sweets  * 
Strawberry  L'e,  Whipped  Cream 
Peaches  h  la  Cond^ 
Praline  Ice  Cream 
Ice  Napolitaine 
Pastry 

Cheese         Fruit         Coffee 


A  few  Suggestions 


Hors  d'oeuvre  Vari^ 

Cream  Soup  h  la  d'Orl^ans 

Sole  Meunifere 

Lamb  Chops,  Sauce  P^rigueux 
Stufied  Artichoke  Bottoms 

Partridge 

Compote  Salad 

Strawberry  Ice,  Whipped  Cream 


Fieldfare  Soup  Old  Style 

Salmon  Cutlets  Jl  la  Count  d'Artoi» 

Fillet  of  Beef  Renaissance 

Croutons  of  Goose  Liver  Moderne  (cold; 

Cherbourg  Poularde 

Compote  Salad 

Palm  Marrow  Bordelaise 

Peaches  d  la  Cond6 


lU.  (Suppef) 

Caprice  Sticks 

Consomm^  Grimaldi 

Turbot,  Butter,  Parsley 

Leg  of  Lamb,  Larded,  Brussels  Sprouts 

Praline  Ice  Cream 
Pastry 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES     385 

and  most  comfortable  floating  hotels.  The  newest 
Hamburg  and  Bremen  steamers  are  indeed  unsurpassed 
in  any  respect,  and  their  cuisine  is  particularly  good. 
The  trans-Atlantic  steamers  have  the  great  advantage 
of  being  able  to  buy  in  New  York  the  best  things 
American  markets  offer,  and  in  the  German  ports  not 
only  the  European  delicatessen^  but  those  which  the 
sister  boats  bring  from  Oriental  countries.  I  once 
gained  eight  pounds  in  as  many  days  crossing  the  Big 
Pond  on  a  German  steamer;  and  can  you  wonder,  in 
view  of  the  abundance  of  the  choicest  viands  offered 
as  antidotes  to  the  hunger-breeding  sea  air^ 

There  are  now  on  the  largest  steamers  Ritz-Carlton 
restaurants  for  wealthy  epicures;  but  you  need  not  go 
to  these  for  good  food,  as  the  sample  menus  for  first- 
cabin  breakfast,  lunch,  and  dinner  on  the  Kaiserin 
Angus te  Victoria^  herewith  reproduced,  indicate.  He 
must  be  hard  to  please,  indeed,  who  cannot  find  some- 
thing on  such  menus  to  tempt  his  appetite — unless  he 
is  sea-sick. 

GERMAN,   SWISS,   AND  DUTCH    CHEESES. 

German  steamers  and  German  restaurants  nearly 
always  offer  a  variety  of  French,  Dutch,  Italian,  Eng- 
lish, and  Swiss  cheeses  in  addition  to  those  of  their 
own  country,  among  the  best  known  of  which  are  the 
Handkase,  the  Liptauer,  the  Harz,  the  Krauter  and  the 
Limburger,  which,   though  it  originated  in  Belgium, 


386  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

has  come  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  specifically  German 
variety. 

Germany  is  not,  like  Switzerland,  Holland,  and 
parts  of  France,  a  land  of  pastures  green  and  studded 
with  grazing  cows.  Pasturage  throughout  the  Empire 
is  usually  so  scarce — the  land  being  needed  for  grain 
and  other  crops — that  the  cows,  poor  things,  are  kept  in 
stables  all  the  year  round.  It  is  therefore,  not  sur- 
prising that  Germany  is  not  among  the  great  exporters 
of  cheeses,  most  of  the  many  domestic  varieties,  some 
of  which  are  excellent,  being  consumed  at  home. 

Very  different  is  the  situation  in  Switzerland,  where 
cheese-making  is  one  of  the  principal  industries,  the 
value  of  the  exports  exceeding  $12,000,000  a  year, 
nearly  one  quarter  of  which,  in  1911,  was  sent  to  the 
United  States.  So  good  is  the  Flavor  of  Schweizer- 
kase  that  even  France,  in  that  year,  took  $2,688,539 
worth  of  it,  while  Germany  took  $1,888,257  worth. 

Nearly  all  the  cheese  which  Switzerland  exports  is 
of  the  hard  Emmenthaler  type,  put  up  in  the  huge 
cakes  familiar  to  us  all.  It  is  practically  the  same  as 
the  French  Gruyere.  Not  all  Emmenthaler  comes 
from  the  Emmenthal,  the  valley  where  the  pasturage 
is  particularly  abundant  and  juicy. 

The  best  flavored  Swiss  cheese  is  that  which  is  made 
in  summer,  when  the  cows  roam  the  mountain  sides, 
going  up  higher  and  higher  as  the  season  advances  and 
the  snow  melts,  till  they  reach  the  slopes  where  even 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES    387 

at  the  end  of  August  the  soil  is  still  moist  and  the  herb- 
age two  or  three  feet  tall.  This  succulent  food,  con- 
sisting largely  of  lovely  Alpine  flowers,  they  indus- 
triously condense  into  fragrant  cream,  butter,  and 
cheese. 

When  we  speak  of  the  Alps  we  mean  snow  moun- 
tains, particularly  those  of  Switzerland.  The  Swiss 
themselves,  however,  when  they  refer  to  the  Alps, 
mean  the  green  pastures  on  the  mountain  sides  on 
which  the  cows  gather  sustenance  and  wealth  for 
them. 

On  one  of  these  Alps,  above  Miirren,  I  once  accosted 
a  peasant  who  gave  me  information  which  confirmed 
my  belief  that  the  much-liked  Flavor  of  Swiss  cheese 
is  due  not  alone  to  the  succulent  Alpine  forage,  but  also, 
in  great  part,  to  the  way  the  best  of  it  is  made — with 
all  the  cream  left  in  the  milk. 

This  peasant  was  himself  a  cheese-maker,  and  our 
conversation  took  place  within  sight  of  his  cowsheds. 
He  was  surprised  when  I  asked  him  if  he  ever  used 
sour  cream  to  make  butter.  He  had  never  dreamt  of 
such  a  thing.  Usually  he  churned  it  in  the  evening, 
using  the  cream  that  had  risen  on  the  morning  of  the 
same  day.  At  the  latest  the  churning  was  done  the 
next  morning  before  the  cream  could  possibly  sour  in 
that  climate.  A  sour  "starter,"  such  as  is  nearly  al- 
ways added  to  cream  in  America  before  it  is  churned, 
he  had  never  heard  of;  the  very  idea  amazed  him. 


388  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

And  Swiss  butter  is  nearly  always  good,  while  Ameri- 
can butter  is  usually  bad. 

Questioned  in  regard  to  cheese,  he  said  they  made 
two  grades  of  it,  the  Fettkase,  which  contains  all  the 
cream,  and  the  Magerkdse,  made  of  skim  milk.  For 
the  latter  kind,  he  said,  he  had  no  use,  because  it  was 
comparatively  tasteless.  It  is  made  in  considerable 
quantities,  however,  for  the  poor,  of  milk  from  which 
the  cream  has  been  taken  for  butter-making  or  for  the 
hotel  tables. 

Cheese-making  is  much  more  of  a  fine  art  than  most 
of  us  imagine.  The  utmost  skill  and  care  must  be 
used  to  exclude  undesirable  flavors  in  the  air  due  to 
uncleanly  surroundings,  since  cheese  absorbs  these  as 
readily  as  butter  does.  The  season  of  the  year  and 
the  feed  must  always  be  considered.  Thus,  in  regard 
to  the  highly  prized  English  Stilton  we  read  that  the 
finest  variety  "is  principally  made  between  March  and 
September  and  solely  from  the  milk  of  cows  fed  on 
natural  pasture";  and  that  "the  use  of  artificial  food 
for  the  cows  is  at  once  detected  in  a  change  for  the 
worse  in  the  character  of  the  cheese" — that  is,  its 
flavor. 

Upon  good  feeding  depends  the  production  of  fat  in 
milk,  and  milk  fat,  alias  cream,  is  a  great  source  of 
Flavor.  The  best  kinds  of  most  of  the  leading  cheeses 
are  made  of  whole  milk — ^milk  with  none  of  the  cream 
taken  out.     Some  kinds,  like  cottage  cheese,  are  made 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES    389 

of  skim  milk  yet  how  the  addition  of  cream  improves 
their  Flavor!  Camembert,  of  course,  is  made  of 
whole  milk,  and  in  the  manufacture  of  some  kinds,  in- 
cluding Stilton,  extra  cream  is  sometimes  added. 

Much  spurious  stuff  is  palmed  off  on  unwary  buyers 
as  whole  milk  or  cream  cheese.  The  dealers  who  do 
this,  think  themselves  "smart,"  but  in  the  end  they 
harm  their  business.  The  excellent  little  book  on 
"Cheese  and  Cheese  Making,"  by  Long  and  Benson 
(London:  Chapman  and  Hall,  1896)  begins  with 
these  instructive  words: 

"Professor  Henry,  of  the  Wisconsin  Agricultural 
College,  recently  stated  that  the  loss  of  the  American 
cheese  trade  with  great  Britain  was  owing  to  the  fact 
that  his  countrymen  did  not  make  the  best  article,  and 
that  in  many  cases  imitation  cheese  was  produced  for 
the  sake  of  a  possible  temporary  profit  hut  to  the  ulti- 
mate loss  of  all  concerned.  Whatever  may  be  the  im- 
mediate gain  effected  by  the  addition  of  foreign  fat 
to  milk,  or  by  the  removal  of  a  portion  of  the  cream  it 
contains,  the  permanent  value  of  the  cheese  industry 
to  the  producer  is  maintained  only  by  the  manufacture 
of  the  best  and  of  its  production  in  the  largest  possible 
quantity." 

The  italics  are  mine.  They  emphasize  what  is  one 
of  the  most  regrettable  aspects  of  the  situation  in 
America — the  deplorable  and  at  the  same  time  foolish 
disposition  to  make  an  immediate  extra  profit  by  un- 


390  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

loading  on  purchasers  inferior  cheeses  and  other  foods 
in  die  belief  that  the  consumers  are  too  ignorant  or 
indifferent  to  know  or  care  what  they  get. 

From  personal  experience  I  can  relate  a  detail  of 
New  York  market  history  which  vividly  illustrates  the 
folly  of  this  attitude. 

For  several  years  I  was  able  to  buy  the  best  Edam 
cheeses  made  in  Holland — full-cream  and  therefore 
full-flavored.  One  autumn,  on  returning  to  the  city,  I 
tried  in  vain  to  get  this  same  brand  at  the  places  where 
it  had  been  on  sale.  I  sampled  the  substitutes  but  was 
not  satisfied  with  their  Flavor.  Having  found  out 
through  a  grocer  the  name  of  the  importer  of  that 
brand,  I  called  on  him  and  asked  why  he  no  longer 
had  it  on  his  list.  He  had  the  effrontery  to  inform  me 
that  it  was  because  he  had  had  so  many  complaints 
that  that  brand  did  not  keep  well — that  it  "dried  out." 
I  told  him  that  my  own  experience  had  been  just  the 
reverse,  and  that,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  more 
cream-fat  there  was  in  a  cheese  the  more  slowly  it 
would  dry  out.     But  he  stuck  to  his  story. 

In  a  confidential  talk  with  a  grocer  I  then  ascertained 
what  I  had  suspected.  Dealers  in  cheap  Edams,  made 
of  skimmed  milk,  had  crowded  out  the  maker  of  the 
creamy  Edam  who,  of  course,  could  not  make  so  low 
a  price  to  the  wholesale  dealers  as  they  did.*  "Why 
not  import  several  brands  and  charge  according  to  their 
value  and  Flavor*?"  I  asked,  adding  that  many  persons 


\ 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES    391 

surely  would  gladly  pay  extra  for  the  better  grades. 
But  that  argument,  too,  was  unavailing.  The  "smart" 
dealers  did  not  wish  to  offer  several  grades;  they 
wanted  to  charge  the  highest  price  for  the  lowest 
grade.     And  now  note  the  consequences. 

In  one  large  market  which  I  often  passed  there  was 
at  that  time  a  large  show  case  containing  dozens  of 
the  familiar  red  "cannon  balls";  but  they  were  no 
longer  of  the  full-cream  brand  the  lively  demand  for 
which  had  won  them  the  most  prominent  place  in  that 
glass  case.  The  new  brand  bore  a  label  on  which  was 
printed  "Made  of  Skimmed  Milk";  and  this  same 
brand  seemed  to  be  almost  exclusively  on  sale  all  over 
town. 

There  was  nothing  dishonest  about  this  procedure. 
Dealers  have  the  right  to  sell  any  variety  they  choose, 
and  this  brand,  being  clearly  marked,  did  not  pretend 
to  be  what  it  was  not.  It  evidently  came  from  Hol- 
land, and  it  was  as  good  a  cheese  as  can  be  made  of 
skimmed  milk. 

The  importers  and  dealers  evidently  believed  that 
the  consumers  were  too  ignorant  or  indifferent  to  care 
whether  or  not  the  cheese  they  bought  had  the  rich 
creamy  Flavor.  At  first  I  feared  they  might  be  right 
in  this  surmise,  but  ere  long  I  found  that  I  was  by  no 
means  the  only  person  who  had  stopped  buying  Edam 
because  the  best  brand  was  no  longer  kept  on  sale  in 
the  American  metropolis.     The  number  of  red  balls 


392  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

in  that  show  case  gradually  diminished  and  finally 
disappeared  altogether. 

The  Dutch  Government  has  given  much  attention 
to  the  question  of  cream  in  cheese,  and  no  wonder,  for 
the  annual  production  of  cheese  in  Holland  amounts 
to  at  least  175,000,000  pounds,  of  which  two- thirds 
are  exported.  The  Minister  of  Agriculture  has  au- 
thorized the  use  of  labels  guaranteeing  purity  and 
quality.  The  Government  control  stamp  "can  be  used 
only  on  cheese  made  of  unskimmed  milk  and  contain- 
ing 45  per  cent,  of  fats,"  writes  Consul  Frank  W. 
Mahin  from  Amsterdam.  "It  is  the  special  inten- 
tion to  make  the  full-fat  product  more  profitable  by 
marking  it,  which  at  the  same  time  will  promote  the 
manufacture  of  the  cheese  of  superior  qualities." 

In  another  contribution  on  this  subject  to  the  "Con- 
sular and  Trade  Reports"  (April,  1911)  Mr.  Mahin 
provides  information  which  buyers  of  Edam  or  Gouda 
will  do  well  to  bear  in  mind: 

"A  meeting  of  the  North  Holland  Cheese  Control 
Station,  attended  by  a  representative  of  the  Govern- 
ment, was  recently  held  at  Hoorn,  at  which  it  was  de- 
cided to  divide  marked  cheese  into  two  classes:  (1) 
Cheese  of  Edam  shape,  with  fatty  component  in  the 
dry  material  of  at  least  40  per  cent.,  to  be  marked  40+, 
in  a  hexagon;  (2)  full  fat  cheese,  of  different  shapes, 
with  a  fatty  substance  in  the  dry  material  of  at  least 


GERMAN  AND  AUSTRIAN  DELICACIES    393 

45  per  cent.,  to  be  marked  Rijkscontrole  (Government 
control). 

"It  was  stated  at  the  meeting  that  the  average  pro- 
portion of  fat  in  the  cheese  made  in  1910  by  factories 
was  44.8  per  cent,  and  by  farmers  47.5  per  cent.,  being 
one  per  cent,  higher  than  in  1909.  The  quantity  of 
marked  cheese  sold  in  IQIO  was  45  "P^^  cent,  greater 
than  in  IQOQ^  and  the  demand  from  dealers  therefore 
has  so  much  increased  that  there  is  now  a  shortage.^^ 

Evidently,  dealers  are  not  everywhere  as  short- 
sighted as  were  those  of  New  York.  However,  in 
the  autumn  of  1912  I  noticed,  among  these,  signs  of 
almost  human  intelligence.  Before  the  end  of  1912 
I  saw  in  some  stores  Dutch  cheeses  labeled  "Above 
40^  butter-fat  in  total  solids."  By  and  by  we  may 
perhaps  be  permitted  to  spend  our  money  even  for  the 
kind  made  by  the  farmers  and  containing  47.5  per  cent, 
of  cream  fat. 


^<^' 


BRITISH   SPECIALTIES 


THACKERAY  S    LITTLE    SERMON. 

NGLAND  has  produced  some 
eminent  epicures.  As  prominent 
among  them  as  among  her  novelists 
is  William  Makepiece  Thackeray. 
In  a  magazine  article  on  Green- 
wich and  Whitebait,  dated  1844, 
he  expressed  his  scorn  for  those 
who  do  not  appreciate  good  food. 
"A  man  who  brags  regarding  himself;  that  whatever 
he  swallows  is  the  same  to  him,  and  that  his  coarse 
palate  recognizes  no  difference  between  venison  and 
turtle,  pudding  or  mutton-broth,  as  his  indifferent 
jaws  close  over  them,  brags  about  a  personal  defect 
— the  wretch — and  not  about  a  virtue.  It  is  like 
a  man  boasting  that  he  has  no  ear  for  music,  or  no  eye 
for  color,  or  that  his  nose  cannot  scent  the  difference 
between  a  rose  and  a  cabbage — I  say,  as  a  general  rule, 

394 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       395 

set  that  man  down  as  a  conceited  fellow  who  swaggers 
about  not  caring  for  dinner." 

Three  years  earlier,  in  his  Memorials  of  Gormandiz- 
ing, which  he  penned  in  Paris,  he  preached  another  ser- 
mon on  the  subject — a  sermon  which  may  fitly  be  re- 
printed here  because  the  state  of  affairs  which  distressed 
Thackeray  has  not  been  quite  mended  yet — far  from  it. 
Speaking  of  Parisian  opportunities  for  gastronomic  ex- 
periments, he  says : 

"A  man  in  London  has  not,  for  the  most  part,  the 
opportunity  to  make  these  experiments.  You  are  a 
family  man,  let  us  presume,  and  you  live  in  that  me- 
tropolis for  half  a  century.  You  have  on  Sunday,  say, 
a  leg  of  mutton  and  potatoes  for  dinner.  On  Monday 
you  have  cold  mutton  and  potatoes.  On  Tuesday, 
hashed  mutton  and  potatoes;  the  hashed  mutton  being 
flavored  with  little  damp  triangular  pieces  of  toast, 
which  always  surround  that  charming  dish.  Well,  on 
Wednesday,  the  mutton  ended,  you  have  beef:  the 
beef  undergoes  the  same  alterations  of  cookery  and  dis- 
appears. Your  life  presents  a  succession  of  joints, 
varied  every  now  and  then  by  a  bit  of  fish  and  some 
poultry.     .     .     . 

"Some  of  the  most  pure  and  precious  enjoyments  of 
life  are  unknown  to  you.  You  eat  and  drink,  but  you 
do  not  know  the  art  of  eating  and  drinking;  nay,  most 
probably  you  despise  those  who  do.  'Give  me  a  slice 
of  meat,'  say  you,  very  likely,  'and  a  fig  for  your  gour- 


396  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

mands.'  You  fancy  it  is  very  virtuous  and  manly  all 
this.  Nonsense,  my  good  sir;  you  are  indifferent  be- 
cause you  are  ignorant,  because  your  life  is  passed  in  a 
narrow  circle  of  ideas,  and  because  you  are  bigotedly 
blind  and  pompously  callous  to  the  beauties  and  excel- 
lencies beyond  you. 

"Sir,  RESPECT  YOUR  DINNER;  idolizc  it,  enjoy  it 
properly.  You  will  be  by  many  hours  in  the  week, 
many  weeks  in  the  year,  and  many  years  in  your  life 
the  happier  if  you  do. 

"Don't  tell  me  that  it  is  not  worthy  of  a  man.  All  a 
man's  senses  are  worthy  of  enjoyment,  and  should  be 
cultivated  as  a  duty.  The  senses  are  the  arts.  .  .  . 
You  like  your  dinner,  man;  never  be  ashamed  to  say 
so.  If  you  don't  like  your  victuals,  pass  on  to  the  next 
article;  but  remember  that  every  man  who  has  been 
worth  a  fig  in  this  world,  as  poet,  painter,  or  musician, 
has  had  a  good  appetite  and  a  good  taste." 

DR.    JOHNSON    AND    SAMUEL    PEPYS. 

Doubtless  the  attitude  towards  the  pleasures  of  the 
table  which  displeased  Thackeray  was  largely  a  sham, 
a  mere  pretense,  though  to  some  extent  it  was  a  Puritan 
reaction  from  the  gross  gluttony  in  which  Englishmen 
indulged  in  ye  olden  times,  as  did  the  Germans,  the 
Romans,  the  Russians,  the  Dutch,  and  many  others. 

Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  was  an  amusing  and  amazing 
example  of  inconsistency  in  his  gastronomic  preaching 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       397 

and  practice.  To  Mrs.  Piozzi  he  remarked  that  "wher- 
ever the  dinner  is  ill  got  up  there  is  poverty  or  there  is 
avarice,  or  there  is  stupidity;  in  short,  the  family  is 
somehow  grossly  wrong."  To  Boswell  he  said: 
"Some  people  have  a  foolish  way  of  not  minding,  or 
pretending  not  to  mind,  what  they  eat.  For  my  part,  I 
mind  my  belly  very  studiously,  and  very  carefully ;  for 
I  look  upon  it  that  he  that  does  not  mind  his  belly  will 
hardly  mind  anything  else." 

Yet  on  other  occasions  Boswell  heard  him  talk  with 
great  contempt  of  people  who  were  anxious  to  gratify 
their  palates.  He  sneered  at  gluttons,  yet  he  was  one 
himself.  "When  at  table  he  was  totally  absorbed  in 
the  business  of  the  moment :  his  looks  seemed  riveted  to 
his  plate ;  nor  would  he,  unless  when  in  very  high  com- 
pany, say  one  word,  or  even  pay  the  least  attention  to 
what  was  said  by  others,  till  he  had  satisfied  his  ap- 
petite ;  which  was  so  fierce,  and  indulged  with  such  in- 
tenseness,  that,  while  in  the  act  of  eating,  the  veins  of 
his  forehead  swelled,  and  generally  a  strong  perspira- 
tion was  visible."  He  told  Boswell  he  had  never  been 
hungry  but  once;  upon  which  that  biographer  com- 
ments :  "They  who  beheld  with  wonder  how  much  he 
ate  upon  all  occasions,  when  his  dinner  was  to  his  taste, 
could  not  easily  conceive  what  he  must  have  meant  by 
hunger."  Yet  he  was  a  man  of  discernment:  he  used 
to  descant  critically  on  the  dishes  which  had  been  at 
table  where  he  had  dined  or  supped,  and  to  recollect 


398  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

very  minutely  what  he  had  liked.  According  to  Mrs. 
Piozzi,  his  favorite  dainties  were  "a  leg  of  pork  boiled 
till  it  dropped  from  the  bone,  a  veal  pie  with  plums  and 
sugar,  or  the  outside  cut  of  a  salt  buttock  of  beef." 
He  surely  needed  a  Parisian  education ! 

The  same  witness  throws  a  limelight  on  the  doctor's 
peculiarities  by  remarking  with  regard  to  drink  that 
"his  liking  was  for  the  strongest^  as  it  was  not  the  flavor 
but  the  effect  he  sought  for  and  professed  to  desire." 

In  other  words,  strength  and  quantity  were  of  greater 
importance  to  him  than  quality  (Flavor) ;  and  in  this 
he  was  a  true  descendant  of  his  predecessors,  one  of 
whom  has  left  an  amazing  record  of  his  appetite.  The 
home  menus  of  Samuel  Pepys  included  on  one  occasion 
"a  dish  of  marrow  bones,  a  leg  of  mutton,  a  loin  of 
veal,  a  dish  of  fowl,  three  pullets,  and  a  dozen  larks 
all  in  a  dish;  a  great  tart,  a  neat's-tongue,  a  dish  of 
anchovies,  a  dish  of  prawns,  and  cheese."  More  aston- 
ishing still  is  the  following  repast,  prepared,  as  he 
boasts,  by  his  "own  only  mayde" :  "We  had  a  fricas- 
see of  rabbits  and  chickens,  a  leg  of  mutton  boiled, 
three  carps  in  a  dish,  a  great  dish  of  a  side  of  lamb,  a 
dish  of  roasted  pigeons,  a  dish  of  four  lobsters,  three 
tarts,  a  lamprey-pie,  a  most  rare  pie,  a  dish  of  ancho- 
vies, good  wine  of  several  sorts,  and  all  things  mighty 
noble."  This  dinner,  he  exclaims,  joyously,  "was 
great."     It  certainly  was. 

If  England  is  to  the  present  day  classed  among  the 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       399 

ungastronomic  nations,  by  her  own  epicures  as  well  as 
by  foreigners,  it  is  due  largely  to  this  indulgence  in 
"great"  dinners,  this  regard  for  quantity — especially  of 
meats — at  the  expense,  usually,  of  quality  and  artistic 
cooking.  Generally  speaking,  the  English  have  been 
slower  than  the  Italians,  the  French,  and  the  Germans 
in  discovering  the  gastronomic  importance  of  the  more 
delicate  Flavors  developed  by  the  cooking,  which  is 
done  con  amore.  Koche  mit  Liehe  is  the  title  of  a 
German  cook  book,  and  there  certainly  are  more  house- 
wives in  the  three  countries  named  who  cook  for  their 
families  "with  loving  devotion"  to  their  task  than  there 
are  in  England  or  America. 

THE    ROAST    BEEF    OF    OLD    ENGLAND. 

Too  much  emphasis  cannot,  however,  be  placed  on 
the  fact  that,  while  all  these  things  are  true,  England 
has  nevertheless  led  the  way  in  some  of  the  most  im- 
portant branches  of  culinary  progress.  It  is  to  these 
branches  that  I  wish  to  devote  this  chapter,  pointing  out 
the  lessons  Great  Britain  teaches  us  and  the  European 
continent.  It  seems  never  to  have  occurred  to  any 
writer  to  do  this,  which  is  strange,  for  the  story  is  in- 
teresting as  well  as  important. 

To  begin  with  butcher's  meats,  the  English  certainly 
excel  in  the  roasting  and  broiling  of  them,  as  well  as  in 
the  rearing  of  the  right  kind  of  stock,  which  is  equally 
important  from  the  point  of  view  of  Flavor. 


400  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

Perhaps  it  is  as  foolish  to  refer  to  the  British  as  beef- 
eaters as  it  is  to  call  the  Italians  macaroni-eaters  and 
the  Japanese  rice-eaters,  for  the  humbler  classes  in 
England  cannot  afford  beef  any  oftener  than  the  poorer 
Italians  and  Japanese  can  afford  to  eat  macaroni  or 
rice. 

Time  was  when  even  the  wealthy  Britons  could  not 
often  eat  beef  or  other  butcher's  meat,  especially  in 
winter.  Up  to  the  eighteenth  century  sheep  and  cat- 
tle were  killed  and  salted  at  the  beginning  of  cold 
weather  and  "during  several  months  of  the  year  even 
the  gentry  tasted  scarcely  any  fresh  animal  food, 
except  game  and  river  fish.  As  to  the  common 
people,  an  old  chapbook  of  the  period,  entitled  The 
Misfortunes  of  Simple  Simon'  uses  the  expression 
'roast-meat  cloaths'  as  an  equivalent  for  holiday 
clothes."  ' 

The  systematic  growing  of  turnips  for  the  winter 
keep  of  cattle  made  it  possible  to  have  fresh  meat  in 
winter,  too;  and  at  the  same  time,  thanks  largely  to 
the  efforts  of  the  agriculturist,  Robert  Bakewell,  cattle 
and  sheep  breeding  began  to  be  done  on  scientific 
principles. 

Bakewell's  aim  was  to  fatten  the  animals  more 
quickly  and  to  secure  a  greater  proportion  and  a  better 

i"Good  Cheer.  The  Romance  of  Food  and  Feasting."  By  F.  W. 
Hackwood.  This  volume  contains  many  interesting  details  relating 
to  old  English  customs  in  the  dining-room  and  kitchen,  in  homes,  inns, 
and  monasteries. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       401 

quality  of  meat.  The  result  of  such  improvements  was 
that,  whereas  in  1710  the  average  net  weight  of  cattle 
sold  in  London  was  370  lbs.,  by  the  time  of  Bakewell's 
death  (1795)  it  had  increased  to  800  lbs.,  while  the 
average  weight  of  sheep  had  increased  from  28  pounds 
to  80. 

In  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Col- 
lins brothers  still  further  improved  cattle  by  breeding 
for  special  points,  reducing  the  size  of  the  head  and  legs 
and  enlarging  the  useful  parts.  The  shorthorns  grad- 
ually extended  their  domain  not  only  throughout  the 
British  Isles  but  to  France  and  other  countries.  Im- 
provement continued  steadily  until  English  beef  be- 
came the  standard  for  the  whole  world. 

With  the  rapid  increase  of  population  and  a  decrease 
in  the  area  of  pasture  land  the  time  came  when  Great 
Britain  had  to  begin  to  import  meats  from  Australia 
and  South  America.  At  the  end  of  the  first  decade  of 
this  century  London  alone  needed  420,000  long  tons  of 
meat  a  year.  Of  this,  over  122,000  tons  came  from 
South  America,  nearly  106,000  tons  from  Australasia, 
about  97,000  tons  from  continental  Europe  and  North 
America,  and  less  than  95,000  tons  from  the  United 
Kingdom  itself. 

For  a  very  good  reason  there  was  for  years  a  preju- 
dice against  all  imported  meats,  their  use  being  con- 
fined exclusively  to  the  poorer  classes  who  could  not 
afford  to  pay  the  higher  prices — from  three  to  twelve 


402  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

cents  a  pound  more — asked  for  the  meat  from  the 
home-grown  or  home-killed  cattle. 

The  very  good  reason  for  this  preference  for  the 
home  product  was  that  imported  meat  was  frozen,  and 
the  public  promptly  discovered  that  meat  which  had 
been  frozen  had  little  or  no  Flavor, 

That  freezing  spoils  the  Flavor  of  meat  was  known 
generations  ago.  Eugen  Baron  Vaerst,  e.  g.,  in  his 
"Gastrosophie,"  Vol.  I,  p.  214,  calls  attention  to  this 
fact  and  explains  why  the  meat  should  be  preserved  by 
chilling  it;  that  is,  by  hanging  it  in  an  icy  atmosphere 
which  is  constantly  kept  moving  and  which  kills  all 
germs  of  putrefaction  without  actually  freezing  the 
meat. 

Naturally  this  process  costs  more  than  simple  freez- 
ing; yet  some  years  ago  attempts  were  made  to  bring 
chilled  meat  from  as  far  as  South  America  and  Aus- 
tralia, and  after  some  improvements  had  been  made  in 
the  methods  of  transportation  the  results  were  most 
satisfactory.  As  one  report  said :  "Part  of  a  quarter 
that  had  been  purposely  sent  a  considerable  distance 
and  then  cooked  in  the  ordinary  way  for  the  table  was 
found  to  be  tender,  full  of  flavor,  and  equal  to  any  beef 
wherever  grown."     No  chemicals  were  used. 

An  amusing  sequel  to  the  story  is  told  with  much 
gravity  in  a  consular  report  from  Sheffield:  "Frozen 
meat  is  much  preferred  by  the  trade  for  two  reasons: 
It  is  cheaper,  and  the  customers^  after  having  used 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       403 

chilled  meats^  will  not  so  readily  take  to  the  frozen 
again'' 

The  dear  dealers,  surely,  ought  to  be  allowed  to  have 
their  own  way.  Why  should  they  pay  any  attention 
to  the  consumer,  with  his  ridiculous  predilection  for 
food  that  has  Flavor? 

Germany  protested  violently  in  1912  against  at- 
tempts to  introduce  frozen  meats,  and  the  following 
consular  information  regarding  another  country  is  sug- 
gestive : 

"The  sale  of  Argentine  frozen  meat  in  Switzerland 
is  not  so  satisfactory  as  originally  expected,  and  the 
large  importers  are  now  buying  live  cattle  from  that 
country,  importing  through  Italy,  and  slaughtering 
there." 

SOUTHDOWN    MUTTON. 

English  mutton  and  lamb  are  as  far-famed  as 
English  beef,  and  most  deservedly  so.  The  unnamed 
but  well-informed  author  of  the  hand-book  on  Sheep 
in  Vinton's  Country  Series  (London)  states  the  plain 
truth  when  he  declares  that  "it  was  because  our  fore- 
fathers had,  during  many  ages,  been  careful  and  skil- 
ful breeders  of  sheep  that  their  descendants  were  en- 
abled to  take  the  front  rank  in  the  world  as  improvers 
of  these  as  well  as  of  horses,  cattle,  and  pigs." 

The  English,  undeniably,  are  in  many  ways  an  un- 
gastronomic  people,  yet  when  we  reflect  that  they  have 


404  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

given  to  the  world  the  best  butcher's  meats — mutton 
and  pork,  as  well  as  beef — their  claim  to  rank  high 
among  gastronomic  nations  is  established.  Think  of 
the  important  role  butcher's  meat  plays  in  our  dietary ! 

It  was  not  by  a  mere  accident  that  Great  Britain  won 
supremacy  in  this  line,  but  in  consequence  of  the  appli- 
cation of  principles  of  scientific  breeding,  resembling 
those  to  which  the  Californian,  Luther  Burbank,  owed 
his  startling  successes  in  creating  new  fruits  and  veg- 
etables of  superior  size,  tenderness,  and  Flavor. 

It  took  the  combined  efforts  of  several  English  "Bur- 
banks"  to  create  the  ideal  mutton  chops  and  joints. 
The  two  who  deserve  the  lion's  share  of  praise  were 
Robert  Bake  well  and  John  Ellman. 

Bake  well  came  first.  Before  his  day,  the  fleece  was 
the  thing  sheep  growers  were  mainly  interested  in. 
They  wanted  as  big  animals  and  as  much  wool  as  pos- 
sible. 

Bake  well  was  not  interested  in  wool.  What  he  was 
after  was  an  improved  mutton-producing  breed — or 
rather  one  which,  besides  meat,  yielded  a  large  amount 
of  fat.  That  was  what  the  market  of  his  day  de- 
manded, in  consequence  of  the  way  in  which  mutton 
was  served.  The  usual  practice,  we  read,  "was  to  put 
a  large  joint  of  fat  mutton  over  a  dish  of  potatoes  at 
the  workman's  table.  The  meat  went  to  the  head  of 
the  family;  the  potatoes,  saturated  with  the  meat  and 
gravy,  making  a  savory  meal  for  the  junior  members. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       405 

Thousands  in  the  manufacturing  and  mining  districts 
were  for  many  years  brought  up  in  this  way,  so  that,  in 
breeding  fat  sheep,  Bakewell  had  a  better  warrant  than 
would  apply  in  the  present  day,  when  fat  is  obtained  in 
more  palatable  and  digestible  form  in  butter  and  its 
cheaper  imitations,  and  when  the  working  classes,  as 
well  as  others,  prefer  to  have  lean  and  juicy  mutton." 

An  anecdote  in  Pitt's  "General  Survey  of  the  Agri- 
culture of  Leicester"  (1809)  throws  further  light  on  the 
situation:  "Your  mutton  is  so  fat  that  I  cannot  eat 
it,"  said  a  gentleman  to  Bakewell,  who  replied:  "I  do 
not  breed  mutton  for  gentlemen,  but  for  the  public; 
and  even  my  mutton  may  be  kept  leaner  to  suit  every 
palate  by  stocking  harder  in  proportion  and  by  killing 
the  sheep  in  time." 

Gradually  the  "public's"  taste  for  mutton  became 
more  "gentlemanly."  At  present  the  article  most  in 
demand  is  a  carcass  weighing  about  twenty  pounds  per 
quarter  "with  a  large  preponderance  of  lean  flesh." 

The  change  was  accelerated  by  the  activity  of  the 
Ellman  family.  Whereas  Bakewell  had  operated  with 
the  long-wool  Leicester  breed,  the  meat  of  which  was 
coarse-grained,  with  little  delicacy  or  Flavor,  the  Ell- 
mans  revealed  to  the  world  the  superlative  gastronomic 
attributes  of  mutton  yielded  by  the  short-wool  South- 
downs. 

In  muttonland  the  Southdown  is  what  the  Bresse  is 
in  the  chicken  world. 


4o6  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

In  London  markets  you  may  find  palatable  meat  cut 
from  the  carcasses  of  the  Wensleydale,  the  Suffolk,  the 
Dorset,  the  Exmoor,  the  Irish  Roscommon,  and  other 
breeds;  but  the  three  breeds  which  are  rated  highest  for 
epicures  are  the  Southdown,  the  Welsh  Mountain,  and 
the  Scotch  Black-faced. 

Note  that  all  three  are  mountain  sheep.  It  is  to  the 
hill-lands  we  must  go  for  meat  of  the  finest  Flavor. 
As  a  rule,  we  read  in  the  admirable  Vinton  book  re- 
ferred to,  "the  fleezy  denizens  of  the  mountains  and 
downs  were  distinguished  by  the  excellence  of  their 
mutton,  their  active  habits,  necessitated  by  long  jour- 
neys in  search  of  the  scanty  food  that  was  available, 
conducing  to  the  development  of  the  finest  quality  of 
meat." 

This  point  is  gastronomically  so  very  important  that 
I  will  quote  also  what  Professor  Tanner  wrote  on  it, 
as  long  ago  as  1869,  in  a  paper  on  the  "Influence  of 
Climate,  etc.,  on  Sheep,"  published  in  the  "Journal  of 
the  Royal  Agricultural  Society  of  England" : 

"The  quality  of  the  meat  depends  upon  the  lean 
portion  being  tender  and  charged  with  a  rich  juice; 
and  these  results  can  only  be  obtained  from  an  animal 
of  mature  age,  of  active  habits,  and  fed  upon  shorty 
sweet  herbage.  By  activity  of  body  the  muscles  are 
brought  into  exercise,  and  a  healthy  growth  is  the  con- 
sequence. The  food  being  short  and  sweet  compels  the 
sheep  to  take  plenty  of  exercise  to  gather  their  supplies. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       407 

and  the  herbage  being  sweet  and  nutritious,  in  contra- 
distinction to  that  which  is  coarse  and  immature,  ren- 
ders the  meat  savory,  the  gravy  dark  and  rich,  and  the 
meat  palatable  and  digestible." 

Professor  Tanner  evidently  understood  the  impor- 
tance of  having  the  right  kind  of  feed — a  subject  on 
which  much  more  will  be  said  in  a  later  chapter,  under 
the  head  of  "Feeding  Flavor  Into  Food." 

The  Southdown  sheep,  which  have  been  happily 
called  "small  in  size  but  great  in  value,"  inhabit  a  dis- 
trict the  characteristics  of  which  explain  the  incompar- 
able Flavor  of  their  mutton.  The  South  Downs  of 
Sussex,  from  which  they  derive  their  name,  "consist  of 
a  range  of  low,  chalky  hills,  five  or  six  miles  in 
breadth,  stretching  along  the  coast  for  a  distance  of  up- 
wards of  sixty  miles  and  passing  into  the  chalky  hills 
of  Hampshire  in  the  west." 

All  the  Southdown  mutton,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
does  not  come  from  one  locality.  The  breed  has  been 
widely  spread  over  the  country  and  also  used  for  cross- 
ing; but  under  similar  conditions  there  is  no  reason  why 
first-class  mutton  should  not  be  produced  in  many  lo- 
calities. Naturally,  substitution  is  practised;  and  in 
England,  as  elsewhere,  the  consumer  is  largely  de- 
pendent on  the  honesty  of  his  butcher.  If  the  butcher 
is  a  wise  man,  anxious  to  get  rich,  he  will  always  pro- 
vide the  best  to  those  who  know  the  difference  and  are 
willing  to  pay  for  it. 


4o8  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

John  Ellman  devoted  half  a  century  to  the  improve- 
ment of  Southdown  mutton,  which  is  now  grown  in 
many  English  counties.  Early  maturity  has  been  one 
of  the  points  aimed  at;  to-day  Southdowns  are  fit  for 
the  butcher  at  thirteen  to  fifteen  months,  and  weigh 
many  pounds  more  than  their  predecessors  did.  Some 
epicures  still  ask  for  well-aged  meat,  but  the  great  buy- 
ing public  "prefer  tender,  fine-grained  meat  cut  from 
young  sheep." 

In  some  parts  of  the  United  States  there  is  a  decided 
prejudice  against  mutton.  No  doubt  this  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  many  local  markets  are  supplied  with  the  mut- 
ton of  sheep  which  are  raised  chiefly  for  their  wool  and 
yield  inferior  meat.  It  would  hardly  do  to  throw  away 
the  carcases  of  these  animals  after  they  have  served 
their  purpose.  But  surely  those  who  can  afford  to 
pay  for  better  meat  from  "mutton-sheep,"  ought 
everywhere  to  have  a  chance  to  do  so.  Mountains 
abound  in  our  country,  and  the  breeders  can,  as  al- 
ready intimated,  make  sheep  perform  any  function 
they  choose  quite  a  la  Burbank. 

We  need  men  of  brains  who  will  let  our  gastronomic 
demands  guide  them  to  wealth  along  this  line  as  along 
so  many  others.  Valuable  hints  may  be  obtained  in 
the  Vinton  book,  from  which  I  have  repeatedly  quoted.^ 

1  "Sheep :  A  Practical  Hand-book."  With  chapter  on  Management 
and  Feeding.  loo  pp.  Price  i  shilling.  London:  Vinton  &  Co., 
Chancery  Lane,  Beam's  Building.  It  is  one  of  a  series  which  includes 
cattle,  horses,  dogs,  poultry,  etc. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       409 

One  more  citation  from  this  creamy  little  book  will 
help  to  emphasize  the  statement  I  have  just  made: 

"At  the  time  of  writing  the  importations  of  foreign 
mutton  are  very  large,  as  they  have  been  for  some  years. 
In  this  way  there  is  an  abundant  supply  of  cheap,  whole- 
some food,  which,  however,  lacks  the  flavor  and  quality 
of  the  home-bred  mutton,  and  those  who  can  afford  it 
will  always  give  a  higher  price  for  the  latter.  The  ob- 
ject, therefore,  of  the  home-breeder  is  to  produce  the 
very  best  description  of  mutton,  for  which  there  is  an 
increasing  demands 

WILTSHIRE    BACON. 

In  the  restaurants  and  hotels  of  France  and  Switzer- 
land, no  less  than  in  those  of  London,  York  ham  is 
often  served,  and  York  ham  at  its  best  is  considered 
by  epicures  equal  to  the  hams  of  Prague  or  Westphalia. 
But  if  the  English  hams  must  share  honors  with  the 
products  of  Germany  and  Bohemia,  when  it  comes  to 
bacon,  Britannia  rules  the  world. 

Let  not  that  seem  a  trifling  matter  to  any  one.  Bacon 
— I  mean  smoked  bacon — is  one  of  the  most  useful  and 
delicious  of  all  appetizers,  alone  or  with  other  meats. 
It  is  a  great  tonic,  too,  on  account  of  its  exceptional 
nutritive  value.  Anemic  individuals  should  eat  it 
every  morning;  it  is  beneficial  to  consumptives  whose 
digestive  powers  are  not  too  enfeebled ;  and  for  nursing 
mothers  it  is  an  ideal  food.     I  remember  reading  in  a 


410  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

medical  journal  that  the  health  of  babies  is  often  won- 
derfully improved  if  the  mother  eats  bacon — good 
bacon,  such  as  one  can  get  in  England  often  and  in 
America  sometimes.  The  drugged,  denatured,  indi- 
gestible rubbish  usually  sold  in  the  United  States  as 
"bacon,"  is  not  fit  for  food.  The  men  who  make  it  or 
sell  it  ought  to  be  imprisoned ;  some  day  they  will  be. 

In  view  of  the  nutritive  value  of  bacon  and  its  ex- 
quisite Flavor  when  properly  cured,  it  seems  strange 
that  Continental  nations  have  not  learned  how  to  make 
it,  except  those  which,  like  Denmark  and  Sweden,  cater 
for  the  English  market.  Canada  also  caters  to  this 
market  and  Canadian  bacon  enjoys  a  much  better  repu- 
tation at  home  and  abroad  than  that  made  in  the  United 
States,  with  a  few  honorable  exceptions. 
/  In  England,  also,  bacon  was  not  always  appraised 
at  its  true  value.  Dryden,  we  are  informed,  "honestly 
liked  the  flitch  of  bacon  better  than  more  delicate 
fare" ;  but  he  deemed  it  necessary  to  apologize  for  hav- 
ing "a  very  vulgar  stomach." 

Doubtless,  in  his  day,  it  took  a  robust  stomach  to  di- 
gest bacon,  and  doubtless,  also,  it  was  not  so  delicate 
and  so  well-flavored  as  it  is  now.  Wiltshire  bacon  is, 
like  Southdown  mutton,  the  outcome  of  years  of  Brit- 
ish breeding  on  scientific  and  gastronomic  principles. 

Professor  Robert  Wallace  of  the  University  of  Ed- 
inburgh tells  in  his  "Farm  Live  Stock  of  Great  Brit- 
ain" what  happened: 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       411 

"A  great  change  has  within  comparatively  recent 
years  come  over  the  system  of  feeding  pigs,  as  well  as 
of  curing  their  carcases.  A  generation  ago  it  was  the 
custom  to  kill  pigs  about  two  years  old,  at  enormous 
weights,  after  the  flesh  had  become  coarse.  The 
method  of  curing  left  the  lean  portion  gorged  with  salt, 
hard,  indigestible  and  uninviting:  then  it  was  an  ad- 
vantage to  have  a  large  proportion  of  fat  to  lean. 
Now,  however,  the  system  of  mild-curing  renders  the 
flesh  sweet  and  juicy,  and  all  eflorts  are  directed 
towards  the  production  of  as  great  a  proportion  of  lean 
to  fat  as  possible.  The  large  increase  of  the  consump- 
tion of  fresh  pork  has  also  encouraged  the  demand  for 
young  lean  bacon ;  and  on  the  other  hand  the  change  of 
fashion  which  has  jput  young  and  tender  pork  on  the 
market  has  helped  to  increase  its  consumption." 

Of  the  many  English  breeds  the  Tam worth  has  been 
found  the  best  bacon  pig.  It  is  one  of  the  eldest  breeds 
and  is  nearly  related  to  the  wild  boar.  It  benefited  by 
the  methods  of  improvement  inaugurated  by  Bakewell 
and  his  pupil.  Colling;  together  with  some  other  Eng- 
lish breeds,  it  has  helped  to  modify,  and  in  some  cases 
has  eliminated,  the  kinds  of  pigs  indigenous  to  Euro- 
pean countries.  The  Danish  curers  admit  that  without 
the  importation  of  stock  from  England  "their  bacon 
would  never  have  taken  such  high  rank  in  the  world's 
markets." 

In  the  United  States,  unfortunately,  most  of  the 


412  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

breeds  are  lard-hogs.  "Bacon  pigs/'  says  Professor 
Robert  Wallace,  "fed  on  Indian  corn  degenerate  into 
lard-hogs." 

Now  lard  is  doubtless  a  profitable  article  to  raise, 
both  for  home  use  and  for  export.  But  in  the  kitchen 
the  use  of  lard  is  an  anachronism,  since  it  has  become 
generally  known  that  butter  and  olive  oil  and  beef  suet 
are  far  superior  to  it  in  the  yield  of  agreeable  Flavors. 
Yankee  ingenuity  may  even  succeed  in  producing 
really  palatable  vegetable  oils  for  cooking — a  consum- 
mation devoutly  to  be  wished,  because  it  will  help 
along  the  efforts  to  substitute  the  bacon  pig  for  the 
lard  hog. 

When  Julius  Sterling  Morton  was  United  States 
Secretary  of  Agriculture  he  published  a  document  which 
attracted  much  attention.  It  was  based  mainly  on  a 
communication  received  from  an  American  official  in 
England  who  advised  American  farmers,  if  they  would 
secure  a  share  of  the  profitable  Danish  and  Canadian 
trade  in  cured  bacon  of  a  superior  quality,  to  give  up 
the  various  American  breeds  and  substitute  the  British 
Tamworths  or  their  crosses.  That  was  many  years 
ago,  but  American  bacon  is  still  for  the  most  part  what 
it  should  not  be,  although  efforts  have  been  made  to  im- 
prove it. 

In  the  "Journal  of  the  (British)  Board  of  Agricul- 
ture" ( 1909-10,  pp.  99-107)  there  is  an  interesting  arti- 
cle on  Cooperative  Bacon  Curing,  the  author  of  which 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       413 

says  that  the  most  useful  breeds  of  pigs  in  the  United 
Kingdom  for  bacon  are  Yorkshire  and  Berkshire  breeds. 
But  "a  pure  breed  of  pigs  is  not  wanted  by  the  bacon 
curer.  What  he  wants  is  a  bacon  pig,  and  this  is  an 
animal  which  does  not  belong  to  any  particular  breed." 

What  is  a  bacon  pig?  The  same  writer  answers: 
"A  bacon  pig  should  mature  in  about  seven  months 
and  should  weigh  about  168  pounds.  This  yields  the 
best  and  most  profitable  bacon.  A  bacon  pig,  further- 
more, must  be  long  in  body  and  deep  in  side.  .  .  . 
This  form  is  desirable  because  it  is  the  side  of  the  hog 
that  furnishes  the  best  and  most  expensive  cuts,  and  it 
is  necessary  to  have  as  much  as  possible  of  this  at  the 
expense  of  the  other  parts." 

Bacon  curing  as  an  organized  industry  is  not  much 
over  half  a  century  old.  The  Wiltshire  cure  of  bacon 
is,  however,  referred  to  as  far  back  as  1 705  by  Edward 
Lisle,  in  his  "Observations  in  Husbandry."  Many 
years  later  there  came  a  great  expansion  of  trade  in 
Wiltshire  County  which  made  the  name  world-famed. 
To  this  day  the  bulk  of  British  bacon  is  cured  in  Wilt- 
shire fashion  in  whole  sides. 

There  are  about  fifty  bacon  factories  in  the  United 
Kingdom.  While  their  capacity  is  not  so  great  as  that 
of  the  factories  in  the  United  States,  the  treatment  and 
quality  of  American  meat  are,  as  the  writer  just  cited 
remarks,  "much  below  the  standard  aimed  at  in  the 
United  Kingdom,  and  notwithstanding  the  immense 


414  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

supplies  of  bacon  which  reach  our  country  from  abroad, 
the  high  price  of  the  home  product  is  on  this  account 
maintained." 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  all  the  bacon  offered 
for  sale  in  England  is  of  superior  quality.  Sanders 
Spencer  complained  some  years  ago  that  the  Irish 
bacon-curers  were  resting  on  their  laurels;  that  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  pigs  found  in  England  "would 
be  looked  upon  with  disgust  by  the  Danes  and  Ca- 
nadians and  that  much  of  the  meat  from  our  home-bred 
pigs  is  inferior  to  a  great  deal  of  imported  pork." 

The  temptation  to  use  denaturing  chemical  preserv- 
atives and  to  smoke  insufficiently,  or  not  at  all,  in  order 
to  save  weight  exists  in  England  as  in  America  and 
must  be  combated  by  the  consumer. 

Extra  choice  specimens  still  come  from  some  English 
hill  farms,  and  the  superexcellence  of  this  bacon  is  due 
chiefly  to  its  being  skilfully  smoked  in  the  old-fash- 
ioned smoke  house,  which  cures  thoroughly  while 
avoiding  the  rankness  that  comes  from  too  rapid  curing 
with  very  strong  smoke.  Properly  smoked  bacon  is 
fragrant,  like  a  flower.  The  other  kind  is  n't.  The 
test  is  a  very  simple  one:  if  the  odor  makes  your 
mouth  water,  it  is  all  right. 

Not  only  "hill-farmers"  but  thousands  of  others 
have  a  chance  to  get  rich  by  catering  to  the  gastronomic 
demands  of  the  time  for  the  best  bacon,  ham,  and  fresh 
young  pork. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       415 

"The  modern  method  of  pig  feeding  has  shown,"  as 
an  expert  informs  us,  "that  a  combination  of  separated 
milk  and  cereals  is  by  far  the  best  fattening  material, 
and  the  future  of  the  bacon-curing  industry  is  there- 
fore, to  a  large  extent,  in  the  hands  of  dairy  farmers." 

Important  information  on  this  point  was  gathered 
for  the  benefit  of  American  farmers  by  Consul  Homer 
M.  Byington,  of  Bristol,  and  printed  in  the  "Daily 
Consular  and  Trade  Reports"  for  January  4,  1912. 
Among  other  things,  he  wrote  that  "Wiltshire  cured 
hams  and  bacon  command  a  higher  price  than  the  hams 
and  bacon  of  any  other  country.  It  is  therefore  of  in- 
terest to  ascertain  why  this  should  be  so.  One  of  the 
most  prominent  experts  in  the  industry  has  stated  that 
it  is  almost  entirely  a  question  of  feeding.  The  fine 
breed  of  hogs  kept  by  the  best  farmers  in  Wiltshire, 
Somerset,  and  Dorset  are  fed  principally  upon  skim 
milk  and  barley  meal.  It  is  claimed  by  the  English 
producers  that  American  hogs  are  practically  all  fed 
on  corn,  which,  although  a  perfectly  wholesome  food, 
tends  to  make  the  hog  fat,  and  a  little  mellow,  whereas 
feeding  by  the  British  method  gives  a  meat  beautifully 
white  and  as  solid  as  meat  need  be."  Referring  to  a 
leading  Wiltshire  curer,  the  Consul  continues: 

"This  latter  firm,  although  purchasing  2,000  to 
3,000  hogs  per  week  from  farmers  in  the  surrounding 
territory,  does  not  allow  any  breeder  under  contract  to 
give  his  animals  refuse  for  food.     The  pigs  are  subject 


4i6  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

to  an  ante-mortem  and  a  post-mortem  examination  by 
a  qualified  veterinary  surgeon  and  medical  officer  of 
health.  No  boracic  acid  or  other  injurious  preserva- 
tive is  used  in  curing." 

In  Germany,  where  one  gets  not  only  hams  of  the 
best  quality,  but  excellent  roast  pork,  many  others  be- 
sides farmers  have  taken  to  raising  pigs.  In  1873  there 
were  only  7,124,088  pigs  in  the  country;  in  1907  there 
were  over  22,000,000.  The  number  of  sheep  has  de- 
creased in  about  the  same  proportion  because  three  hogs 
can  be  raised  by  a  peasant  where  he  could  not  graze 
one  sheep. 

Pigs  are  particularly  profitable  because  they  can  be 
fed  largely  on  kitchen  refuse  and  unsalable  skim  milk 
and  because  a  pig  "will  produce  a  pound  of  meat  from 
a  far  less  weight  of  food  than  will  either  sheep  or 
cattle." 

By  "mixing  brains  with  the  food,"  the  profits  can 
be  enormously  increased.  Let  me  ask  every  American 
and  English  farmer  to  put  the  following  words  of 
England's  leading  authority,  Sanders  Spencer,  into  his 
pipe  and  smoke  them  slowly  and  thoroughly: 

"This  selection  of  a  compact,  thick-fleshed,  and  pure 
quality  sire  is  of  even  greater  importance  in  the  pig 
department  of  the  farm  than  in  many  others,  as  our  ob- 
ject is  to  breed  a  pig  which  is  capable  of  converting  a 
large  quantity  of  food  into  the  largest  amount  of  fine 
quality  of  meat^  and  is  so  formed  that  the  latter  is 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       417 

placed  on  those  portions  of  the  pig's  body  which  realize 
the  largest  price  in  the  market} 

There  is  a  funny  story  of  a  farmer  who  gave  his  pigs 
all  they  could  eat  one  day  and  starved  them  the  next, 
in  order  to  have  his  bacon  nicely  streaked  with  alternate 
layers  of  fat  and  lean.  In  England  they  seem  to  have 
a  number  of  these  ingenious  farmers;  at  any  rate,  in 
Wiltshire  bacon  there  is  always  plenty  of  lean  meat. 
And  how  delicious  it  tastes  when  grilled,  or  baked  in  a 
roasting  pan  on  a  wire  rack  from  which  the  fat  drips  to 
the  bottom  of  the  pan ! 

When  the  bacon  is  too  fat  to  suit  the  native  con- 
noisseur it  is  apparently  exported  to  America  and  sold 
at  fancy  prices  to  people  who  have  more  money  than 
knowledge. 

Gastronomic  demands  suggest  many  opportunities 
to  get  rich,  particularly  along  this  line.  Spencer 
speaks  of  the  "marvelous  increase  in  the  proportion  of 
the  inhabitants  of  the  British  Isles  who  now  eat  pork." 
Ireland  exported  nearly  $17,500,000  worth  of  pork 
products  in  1909.  The  slaughter  houses  of  Denmark 
deal  with  over  a  million  pigs  a  year,  largely  for  export 
to  the  United  Kingdom,  which,  in  1911,  imported 
altogether  nearly  $100,000,000  worth  of  bacon  and 
other  pork  products. 

In  epicurean  France  pork  gains  rapidly  on  other 
meats  and  the  Germans  eat  nearly  twice  as  much  pork 

1  'Tigs  for  Breeders  and  Feeders."    London ;  Vinton  &  Co, 


4i8  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

as  they  do  beef.  The  figures,  in  pounds,  of  the  per  cap- 
ita consumption  in  the  Empire  for  the  first  three  months 
of  1912  stood  in  this  ratio:  Mutton  0.33;  veal,  1.54; 
beef,  7.87;  pork,  14.55. 

FAIR    PLAY    FOR    PIGS. 

In  the  United  States,  also,  the  demand  for  pork 
products  is  growing.  It  would  grow  very  much  more 
rapidly  were  it  not  for  three  drawbacks:  the  custom 
of  denaturing  hams  and  bacon  and  of  marketing  the 
tough  meat  of  old  lard-pigs,  and  the  impudent  sale  to 
the  public  of  the  products  of  swill-fed  hogs  that  are 
not  fit  to  eat. 

It  is  impossible  to  place  too  much  emphasis  on  the 
fact  that  no  matter  of  how  fine  a  breed  the  pig  may  be, 
its  meat  is  spoiled  if  the  feed  given  it  is  of  an  offensive 
nature.  Farm-kitchen  refuse  is  harmless  when  mixed 
with  milk  and  greens,  but  porkers  fed  on  city  swill  and 
garbage  do  not  yield  palatable  meat. 

Pigs  seldom  have  fair  play.  Most  farmers  lower 
the  value  of  the  pork  they  raise  by  not  giving  the  ani- 
mals fresh  air,  sunshine,  some  exercise,  and  clean  sties. 
In  these  respects  we  are  not  the  only  sinners.  From 
an  admirable  editorial  article  in  the  London  "Times" 
of  June  27,  1912,  I  cite  the  following: 

"The  pig  is  generally  kept  in  conditions  of  a  grossly 
unsanitary  kind.  He  is  quite  a  cleanly  animal  if  left 
to  himself,  but  he  is  kept  in  sties  which  compel  him  to 


BRITISH   SPECIALTIES       419 

wallow  in  filth  all  day  and  to  sleep  in  a  horribly  con- 
fined and  polluted  atmosphere  when  he  seeks  shelter. 
Nature  did  not  construct  him  for  such  conditions,  but 
for  an  open-air  life,  and  it  is  not  really  surprising  that 
he  develops  swine-fever,  which,  by  the  way,  is  remark- 
ably like  the  fevers  that  afflict  overcrowded,  filthy,  and 
unventilated  human  dwellings.  Cowhouses  are  regu- 
lated, but  pigsties  are  not.  Their  position,  however,  is 
regulated  in  a  way  that  presses  very  hardly  upon  cot- 
tagers. It  is  calmly  assumed  that  pigsties  must  be 
dirty  and  offensive,  so  instead  of  insisting  that  they 
shall  be  clean,  legislation  decrees  that  they  shall  be  at  a 
distance  from  dwellings  which  makes  it  impossible  for  a 
cottager  to  pay  his  rent  with  cheaply  raised  bacon." 

Pigs  that  are  overfed  and  denied  fresh  air,  sunshine, 
exercise,  and  a  clean  bed  cannot  possibly  yield  meat 
with  a  tempting  Flavor,  for  such  animals  are  really  dis- 
eased— as  unhealthy  as  the  slum-dwellers  in  our  large 
cities,  whom  no  cannibal  would  touch. 

The  best  American  ham,  as  everybody  knows,  is  the 
Virginia,  cut  from  hogs  that  roam  the  woods,  live  on 
acorns  and  beech  nuts  and  are  thoroughly  healthy. 

The  attitude  of  the  ancient  Britons  toward  the  pig 
was  one  almost  of  reverence,  not  only  because  of  its 
utility  in  the  larder,  but  because  it  fed  on  the  acorns 
from  the  sacred  oaks. 

In  those  days  all  British  pork  was  no  doubt  similar 
to  the  meat  of  the  young  wild  boar.     Civilization,  as 


,^i^■^€iSL^? 


i 


The  Boar 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       421 

in  so  many  other  things,  brought  on  a  temporary  de- 
terioration which  caused  pork  to  be  despised  and  con- 
sidered fit  only  for  those  who  had  not  the  means  to  buy 
something  better;  and  it  is  only  now  that  we  are  com- 
ing to  realize  fully  that  the  fault  was  that  of  the  farm- 
ers who,  by  refusing  to  give  the  pigs  fair  play,  made  it 
impossible  for  them  to  come  up  to  the  highest  epicurean 
standard  as  regards  Flavor. 

According  to  high  geological  authority,  the  boar, 
from  whom  our  domestic  pigs  are  descended,  was  coeval 
with  the  extinct  species  of  the  mastodon  and  the 
dinotherium,  and  "hence  must  be  regarded  as  the  most 
ancient  of  our  domesticated  animals." 

An  aristocrat,  in  other  words,  is  the  pig!  He  is 
selfish,  like  most  "aristocrats" — that  cannot  be  de- 
nied; but  he  is  clean — even  his  mud  baths  are  taken 
merely  to  cool  off  or  to  scour  his  skin.  Trainers,  more- 
over, will  tell  you  that  he  is  one  of  the  most  intelligent 
of  animals. 

Pig  brains  are  good  to  eat,  too — better  than  calves' 
brains,  but  are  usually  sold  as  calves'  brains  because 
that 's  what  the  ignorant  purchaser  asks  for.  And  pork, 
young,  tender,  and  not  too  fat,  is  good  all  the  year 
round,  not  only  in  the  months  which  have  an  R  in  them. 

GROUSE    AND    GRILLED    SOLE. 

Wild  boars  no  longer  roam  the  forests  of  England. 
Sportsmen  do  their  pig-sticking  in  the  jungles  of  India. 


422  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

But  venison  in  season  is  still  in  evidence,  and  the  hare 
will  never  be  extinct,  though  he  now  comes  to  London 
chiefly  in  shiploads  from  Australia. 

The  well-informed  editor  of  the  "Hors  d'CEuvre" 
department  of  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette"  gives  an  amus- 
ing glimpse  of  the  situation  as  regards  English  and 
Scotch  venison,  which  he  considers  a  veritable  delicacy, 
preferable  to  the  highly-sauced  venison  of  France  and 
Germany  : 

"We  ought  really  to  eat  more  venison  when  in  sea- 
son, but  if  the  ordinary  housewife  were  asked  to  pro- 
vide it  quite  in  the  ordinary  way  for  an  ordinary  dinner 
at  home,  she  would  be  entirely  nonplussed.  'But  the 
butcher  does  not  keep  it.'  'Try  the  poulterer.'  *The 
poulterer  says  he  can  get  it  at  a  day's  notice.'  Why 
all  this  fuss?  Venison  is  a  national  dish;  it  is  not  ex- 
pensive ;  it  is  most  nutritious  and  wholesome.  Some 
one  ought  to  'buck  up'  the  venison  market." 

Among  British  feathered  animals  the  best  is  the 
grouse,  "the  only  really  native  game  bird  of  these 
islands."  It  comes  to  London  by  fast  expresses  from 
the  North — recently  also  from  Ireland,  which  would  be 
a  finer  grouse  country,  were  it  not  for  poachers.  For 
the  first  days  of  the  season  grouse  bring  easily  a  guinea 
a  brace  in  London  market,  cheaper  ones  being  cold- 
storage  suspects.  Later  on — thanks  to  rational  meth- 
ods of  game  preservation — they  pour  in  daily  by  the 
tens  of  thousands  and  come  down  to  8s.  or  less  a  brace. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       423 

Though  never  as  cheap  in  the  restaurants  as  partridge 
is  in  Germany,  grouse  is  worth  its  price  when  cooked  in 
the  English  way,  which  preserves  all  the  woodland 
flavor  of  the  bird. 

English  farmers  have  not  waked  up  to  the  oppor- 
tunities that  lie  in  catering  to  the  demand  for  fresh- 
killed  poultry  of  all  kinds.  The  best  restaurants  get 
their  supplies  usually  from  France.  There  is  in  the 
Kingdom  not  even  one  adult  fowl  per  acre  of  cultivated 
land.  Here  are  possibilities  of  tremendous  improve- 
ments, for,  as  Professor  Edward  Brown  of  the  Ontario 
Agricultural  College  has  truly  said:  "Masses  of 
people  living  under  highly  artificial  conditions  must 
have  food  high  in  nutritive  elements,  easily  digested 
and  palatable,  in  which  respect  eggs  stand  first  among 
all  natural  products  and  poultry  not  far  behind." 

A  well-known  poulterer  is  cited  as  saying  in  regard 
to  the  London  markets:  "Fat  goslings  and  ducks  are 
in  good  demand,  and  the  best  prices  are  being  given 
for  them.  One  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  tens  of 
thousands  of  geese  and  turkeys  were  reared  in  Suffolk, 
Norfolk,  Cambridgeshire,  and  adjacent  counties.  The 
numbers  now  are,  in  comparison,  insignificant.  Never- 
theless, the  industry  is  one  which  might  be  made  one  of 
great  importance  and  quite  comfortable  profits." 

A  very  different  situation  confronts  us  when  we  look 
at  the  supply  of  seafood.  Here  the  British  Isles  hold 
their  own  in  competition  with  any  country,  and  the 


424  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

methods  adopted  to  ensure  a  daily  supply  of  fresh  fish 
cannot  be  too  urgently  commended  to  American  fish 
dealers. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  sights  in  London  is  Bil- 
lingsgate market.  Fish  have  been  sold  here  for  sev- 
eral centuries,  but  under  changing  conditions.  No 
longer  will  you  find  here  the  "fat,  motherly  flatcaps, 
with  fish-baskets  hanging  over  their  heads  instead  of 
riding-hoods,  with  silver  rings  on  their  thumbs,  and 
pipes  charged  with  'mundungus'  in  their  mouths,  sit- 
ting on  inverted  eel-baskets  and  strewing  the  flowers  of 
their  exuberant  eloquence  over  dashing  young  town- 
rakes  who  had  stumbled  into  Billingsgate  to  finish  the 
night.  .  .  .  But  the  town-rakes  kept  compara- 
tively civil  tongues  in  their  heads  when  they  entered 
the  precincts  of  the  Darkhouse.  An  amazon  of  the 
market,  otherwise  known  as  a  Billingsgate  fish-fag, 
was  more  than  a  match  for  a  Mohock,"  as  George 
Augustus  Sala  remarked  in  his  "Twice  Round  the 
Clock,  or  the  Hours  of  the  Day  and  Night  in  London." 

Gone  are  these  amazons  who  by  their  abusive  speech 
gave  a  new  word  to  the  English  language.  Men  now 
monopolize  Billingsgate  Market,  and  the  joke  of  it  is 
that  these  men,  as  we  found  them  at  six  o'clock  on  a 
September  morning,  are  the  very  pink  of  politeness, 
most  courteously  ready  to  answer  your  questions  re- 
garding different  fishes,  and  cockles,  and  periwinkles, 
though  they  know  you  are  not  there  to  buy.     Even  the 


BRITISH   SPECIALTIES       425 

rough,  hurrying  fish-porters  make  way  for  you  to  pass, 
and  the  auctioneers  stop  to  warn  you  against  places 
where  your  clothes  might  get  soiled  by  drippings. 

Billingsgate  is  now  entirely  given  over  to  the  whole- 
sale fish-trade.  The  smell  of  it,  fish-like  but  not 
ancient — for  it  is  a  clean  place — easily  guides  you  to 
the  spot  from  the  nearest  station  of  the  subway's  inner 
circle.  The  streets  near  it  are  wet  with  the  drip  of 
fish-filled  boxes,  and  crowded  with  wagons  that  are 
being  loaded  with  the  town's  provisions  of  sea  food — 
strictly  fresh  every  day. 

Billingsgate  Market  being  on  the  water's  edge  all 
the  fish  is  unloaded  direct  from  the  fishing  boats.  Pro- 
cessions of  porters  come  from  the  boats,  each  with  a 
great  box  full  of  fish  balanced  on  the  top  of  his  head, 
on  a  queerly-shaped,  padded,  waterproof  hat  made 
expressly  for  this  work.  The  fish  are  kept  cool  with 
loose  ice,  but  are  not  frozen.  The  Spanish  mackerel 
with  their  dark  markings  and  opaline  sides  offer  the 
most  beautiful  sight  of  all,  so  freshly  caught  that  their 
colors  are  as  vivid  as  when  they  left  the  water. 

Besides  these  are  whitings,  flounders,  pale-brown  sole, 
halibut,  turbot,  all  shining  from  the  sea,  and  among 
the  shell-fish  may  be  seen  oysters,  huge  crabs,  lobsters, 
— white  flecked  dark  green  ones — ^periwinkles,  and 
cockles.  The  latter  look  somewhat  like  very  small 
clams,  and  they  are  sold  cooked,  having  been  separated 
from  their  shells  by  large  sieves. 


426  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

In  the  best  New  York  restaurants  you  are  not  sure 
of  getting  fresh  fish  when  you  order  it.  In  the  best 
London  restaurants  you  are.  Probably  some  of  the 
fish  we  saw  that  morning  at  Billingsgate  was  served  to 
us  that  evening  for  dinner.  I  mean  sole,  of  course. 
We  were  to  be  in  London  only  a  week  on  this  occasion, 
and  when  you  are  in  London  a  week  only  it  would  be 
unutterably  absurd  not  to  eat  grilled  sole  at  least  once 
a  day,  for  you  cannot  get  anything  equal  to  it  any- 
where else  in  the  wide,  wide  world. 

There  are  some,  I  know,  who  place  turbo t  above  sole, 
and  others  even  prefer  plaice.  Put  no  faith  in  such 
people ;  they  could  never  be  honestly  elected  to  a  place 
on  the  bench  of  the  Gastronomic  Supreme  Court. 
Turbot  is  delicious,  and  so  is  plaice,  and  so  are  chinook 
salmon  and  our  shad  and  whitefish.  Each  of  these 
seems  the  best  of  all  fishes  while  you  are  eating  it;  but 
sole  actually  is  the  best.  How  do  I  prove  this'?  Like 
the  musician  who  boasted  he  was  the  best  horn  player 
in  the  world,  I  do  not  prove  it;  I  admit  it. 

Seriously  speaking,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  if  a 
vote  were  taken  on  this  question  among  the  epicures 
of  Europe,  sole  would  win  by  a  large  majority.  In 
Germany  the  Seezunge^  or  "sea- tongue,"  is  the  choicest 
of  marine  delicacies,  and  in  France  the  chef's  chief  glory 
is  his  sole  and  the  special  sauce  he  serves  with  it.  But 
nowhere  is  the  sole  so  juicy  and  flavorful  as  in 
England;  nor  is  it  disguised  there  with  any  sauce,  being 


BRITISH   SPECIALTIES       427 

served  usually  right  off  the  grill.  Grilled  Sole  is  one 
of  England's  great  specialties. 

Whitebait  is  another.  It  is  not  a  distinct  species  but 
consists  of  the  fry  of  herrings,  smelts,  sprats,  sand-eels, 
weevers,  etc.  It  is  supposed  to  have  been  first  served 
in  1780.  To  this  day  no  tourist  who  likes  good  things 
to  eat  omits  a  trip  to  Greenwich  to  enjoy  a  dish  of 
whitebait  at  headquarters  in  the  ship  tavern.  When 
Thackeray  was  there  he  indulged  in  these  reflections: 
"Ah,  he  must  have  had  a  fine  mind  who  first  invented 
brown  bread  and  butter  with  whitebait!  That  man 
was  a  kind,  modest,  gentle  benefactor  to  his  kind.  We 
don't  recognize  sufficiently  the  merits  of  those  men  who 
leave  us  such  quiet  benefactions.  A  statue  ought  to 
be  put  up  to  the  philosopher  who  joined  together  this 
charming  couple." 

Yarmouth  bloaters  and  other  cured  fish  are  British 
specialties  relished  the  world  over.  But  the  best  of 
them  is  Finnan  haddock,  so  named  after  Findon,  a  fish- 
ing village  near  Aberdeen  where  haddock  smoking  with 
peat  or  oak  dust  has  attained  perfection.  There  are 
flavorless  imitations,  preserved  with  pyrol igneous  acid. 
The  genuine  are  cured  in  smoke  houses.  The  condi- 
mental  value  of  smoke  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that 
while  fresh  haddock  is  by  no  means  rated  among  the 
finest  fishes,  finnan  haddie  is  one  of  the  very  best  of 
cured  fishes. 

The  Whitstable  oyster  is  still  another  marine  spe- 


428  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

cialty  enjoyed,  not  only  throughout  the  British  Isles 
as  one  of  the  most  precious  "natives,"  but  also  on  the 
Continent.  Far  away  Austria  imports  only  $io,ooo 
worth  of  oysters  a  year  from  all  sources,  but  from  Ber- 
lin and  other  German  cities  come  large  orders  for  the 
best  English  bivalves.  France  also  takes  them,  but 
not  on  a  large  scale,  as  her  own  oyster  producti«i  is 
large. 

The  best  Whitstable  oysters— from  the  coasts  of 
Kent  and  Essex — are  known  as  royals  and  cost  in 
restaurants  three  or  four  shillings  a  dozen,  which  is 
considerably  more  than  the  price  charged  in  our  own 
restaurants.  Whether  they  are  worth  more  is  a  much 
disputed  point.  Most  Americans  object  to  what 
they  call  the  coppery  taste  in  English  and  Northern 
European  oysters.  Paderewski  agreed  with  those  who 
pronounce  the  English  oyster  superior  to  the  Ameri- 
can. I  suggested  that  he  probably  had  had  the 
"floated"  American  oysters  only.  Certainly  I  have 
never  tasted  oysters  with  a  more  delicious  Flavor  than 
genuine  Blue  Points,  Cotuits  and  Lynnhavens.  The 
English  natives  are  small,  juicy,  and  fragrant  of  the 
sea — ^great  appetizers  indeed. 

Alas,  in  England  also  the  sewage  plague  has  cast 
its  blight  on  the  shellfish  business.  Two  decades  ago 
160,000,000  oysters  are  said  to  have  been  landed  an- 
nually. In  1911  the  number  fell  forty  or  fifty  mil- 
lions short  of  that  figure  because  of  typhoid  fever  and 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       429 

other  diseases  traced  to  the  eating  of  oysters  from  pol- 
luted beds.  The  importation  of  American  oysters 
was  only  at  the  rate  of  100  barrels  a  week  in  1911,  as 
against  2,000  barrels  fifteen  years  earlier. 

Of  the  other  British  shellfish  the  periwinkle  is  much 
appreciated  by  the  epicurean  French  who,  not  satisfied 
with  importing  them  from  England  in  bulk  have  also 
brought  them  over  to  plant  in  their  own  beds.  They 
are  boiled  a  few  minutes  in  salted  water  and  served 
with  butter  as  an  entree,  usually  at  the  second  morn- 
ing meal. 

COVENT    GARDEN    MARKET    SCENES. 

That  the  English  do  not  live  on  butcher's  meats 
and  marine  food  alone,  is  made  manifest  by  a  matutinal 
visit  to  Covent  Garden. 

"In  Covent  Garden  a  filthy  noisy  market  was  held 
close  to  the  dwellings  of  the  great.  Fruit  women 
screamed,  carters  fought,  cabbage  stalks  and  rotten 
apples  accumulated  in  heaps  at  the  tliresholds  of  the 
Countess  of  Berkshire  and  of  the  Bishop  of  Dunham" 
— such  is  Macaulay's  picture  of  this  market  at  the  close 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  is  still  given  up  en- 
tirely to  vegetables,  fruits,  and  flowers,  but  is  now 
clean,  orderly,  and  not  especially  noisy,  as  markets  go 
— not  so  noisy,  perhaps,  as  some  of  the  operas  per- 
formed in  the  neighboring  Covent  Garden  Theater, 
the  resort  of  fashionable  society. 


430  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

In  September  we  found  the  flower  pavilions  the  most 
interesting  part  of  the  market.  Chrysanthemums  with 
rich,  deep-colored  blossoms  were  the  reigning  favorites. 
Conspicuous  among  their  rivals  were  the  dahlias,  gaudy 
and  varicolored,  some  of  them  solid  as  cabbage  heads, 
others  strangely-quilled.  Bright  autumn  leaves,  re- 
calling New  England,  attracted  our  attention.  In  one 
spot  golden  chrysanthemums  and  melons  of  exactly  the 
same  shade  made  a  beautiful  picture. 

On  the  whole  the  vegetable  quarters  are  not  specially 
interesting,  particularly  when  one  has  seen  the  Halles 
Centrales  of  Paris.  Flowers  do  not,  as  in  Paris,  crowd 
in  among  them,  nor  are  the  streets  picturesque  and  slip- 
pery with  many  shades  of  green  refuse.  The  carts  are 
not  emptied  as  they  are  in  Paris,  but  form  each  its  own 
stall.  All  the  vegetable  pictures  are  "skied,"  and  are 
far  less  attractive  than  when  they  lie,  in  orderly  con- 
fusion, all  over  the  market  streets.  Celery,  the  first  we 
had  seen,  was  enormous,  but  deep  green,  instead  of 
white,  like  ours.  Many  of  the  provisions  are  packed 
and  sold  hidden  in  large  round  baskets.  A  perfect 
tower  of  Babel,  ten  baskets  in  all,  is  one  man's  load,  car- 
ried on  his  head,  but  they  are  evidently  empty,  as 
two  seem  to  be  as  heavy  a  weight  as  a  man  cares  to  bal- 
ance when  they  are  full. 

George  Meredith  is  quoted  as  having  said  to  a  friend 
that  he  would  be  a  vegetarian  if  he  could  get  his  veg- 
etables decently  cooked. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       431 

There  are  a  few  vegetarian  restaurants  in  London, 
and  probably  there  would  be  many  more  if  the  English 
knew,  as  several  Continental  nations  know,  the  art  of 
cooking  greens  and  roots  in  a  savory  manner.  Sir 
Henry  Thompson  grew  enthusiastic  over  the  "delicious 
characteristic  flavor"  of  English  garden  peas,  picked 
young  and  cooked  a  V Anglais e^  which  is  a  better  way 
than  any  French  fashion  of  cooking  them.  Vegetable 
marrow  tastes  better  in  England  than  anywhere  else, 
and  the  mushrooms  are  good.  But  on  the  whole 
England  has  a  great  deal  to  learn  from  France  regard- 
ing variety  and  the  best  ways  of  growing  and  cooking 
vegetables. 

Salad  plants,  in  particular,  are  not  appreciated  as 
they  should  be.  Read  this  wail,  for  an  illustration, 
from  a  Covent  Garden  market  report  in  the  London 
"Telegraph":  "Nothing  short  of  a  prolonged  heat 
wave  induces  people  to  eat  liberally  of  this  health-giv- 
ing vegetable.  It  was  pitiful,  yesterday,  to  see  stacks 
of  first-rate  lettuce  utterly  neglected.  The  very  best 
samples,  carefully  selected  and  packed  in  boxes,  real- 
ized no  more  than  6d.  per  score — a  score,  by  the  way, 
being  twenty-two  heads.  Any  amount  remained  un- 
sold." 

Tomatoes  are  getting  to  be  almost  as  popular  as  in 
America.  In  England,  as  elsewhere,  there  are  those 
who  maintain  that  "no  salad  is  perfect  without  the 
inclusion  of  a  little  tomato" ;  and  of  course  the  delicious 


432  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

"love-apples,"  as  they  used  to  be  called,  are  eaten  in 
many  other  ways,  raw  or  cooked,  grilled  tomatoes  be- 
ing an  English  specialty. 

That  England  is  a  great  fruit  country  no  American 
can  admit,  however  much  he  may  enjoy  the  luscious 
hot-house  and  wall-grown  peaches,  nectarines,  melons, 
pears,  and  grapes.  Fruit  needs,  above  all  things,  sun- 
shine, and  of  sunshine  we  have  a  great  deal  more  at 
home,  especially  in  California.  At  Covent  Garden  and 
in  the  fruit  shops  of  the  metropolis  there  are  indeed 
some  tempting  displays,  but  the  prices  are  apt  to  stag- 
ger the  visitor  from  across  the  Atlantic,  who  seldom 
pays  more  than  a  nickel  for  a  peach  or  two — say  two 
shillings  a  dozen  at  most — whereas  in  England  peaches 
grown  in  orchards  sell  at  retail  for  six  to  ten  shillings  a 
dozen,  while  those  grown  in  hot-houses  bring  from  fif- 
teen shillings  ($3.65)  to  a  guinea  ($5.11)  per  dozen. 
If  you  told  the  average  Londoner  that  in  New  York  one 
can  often  buy  five  or  six  good  cantaloupes  for  a  shilling, 
he  would  not  believe  you  without  an  affidavit  signed  by 
the  Consul  General. 

It  may  be  said  that  owing  to  their  cooler  climate  the 
inhabitants  of  the  British  Isles  do  not  need  fruit  as 
much  as  we  do,  and  that  is  true.  Yet  in  all  climates, 
seasons,  and  conditions  of  the  weather  fruit  is  healthful, 
and  its  Flavor  is  a  great  appetizer  and  aid  to  digestion. 
It  is  therefore  encouraging  to  notice  that  strenuous  ef- 
forts are  being  made  not  only  to  remove  the  old  re- 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       433 

proach  that  English  grapes  and  other  hot-house 
products  have  more  beauty  than  Flavor,  but  also  to 
raise  and  import  orchard  fruits  in  such  abundance  as 
to  bring  them  within  the  reach  of  the  purchaser  of  mod- 
erate means. 

The  growth  of  the  banana  trade  strikingly  illustrates 
this  point.  In  the  first  years  of  this  century  this  sweet 
and  nutritious  fruit  was  seldom  seen  in  English  mar- 
kets. To-day  there  is  a  whole  fleet  of  steamers  oc- 
cupied exclusively  in  bringing  bananas  from  the  West 
Indies  and  elsewhere  to  British  ports.  The  change  was 
greatly  accelerated  by  the  shrewdness  of  the  importers, 
who  freely  advertised  the  merits  of  their  goods  in  the 
newspapers,  citing  sample  recipes  for  cooking  them 
from  a  little  book  which  is  offered  free. 

This  method  of  educating  the  public  to  try  new 
foods  and  dainties  doubtless  has  a  great  future.  The 
Germans  have  a  saying :  Was  der  Esel  nicht  kennt  das 
frisst  er  nkht^  which  politely  translated  means  "the 
public  must  be  taught  to  eat  things  it  does  not  know." 

A  decade  ago  one  seldom  saw  any  grapefruit  in 
England.  It  was  Mrs.  John  Lane  who  taught  Lon- 
doners the  art  of  enjoying  this  most  wholesome  and 
palatable  fruit — the  queen  of  the  citrus  tribe.  Its 
juice  IS  the  most  marvelous  combination  of  sour,  bitter, 
and  sweet  in  existence,  and  its  charm  grows  on  you 
from  day  to  day.  Mrs.  Lane  induced  her  greengrocer 
to  keep  some  in  stock,  but  ere  long  he  confided  to  her 


( 


434  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

that  they  were  "bloomin'  sour"  and  mostly  a  dead  loss, 
for  customers  never  bought  them  more  than  once. 
"They  're  forever  asking  me  how  to  eat  'em,"  he  said, 
"and  how  should  I  know !" — here  he  wiped  his  hands 
hesitatingly  on  his  apron — "but  if  I  could  tell  'em  how, 
why  the  trade  would  be  grateful ;  anyhow,  I  'd  be." 

So  Mrs.  Lane  wrote  a  little  pamphlet  in  which  she 
explained  the  secret  of  serving  grapefruit  sweetened  in 
such  ways  that  all  may  enjoy  it.  It  is  entitled  "The 
Forbidden-Fruit  or  Shaddock;  or  Grapefruit,  How  to 
Serve  and  How  to  Eat  It."  (John  Lane,  Vigo  Street, 
London.) 

Doubtless  this  pamphlet  had  much  to  do  with  in- 
creasing the  number  of  grapefruit  eaters  in  Britain,  now 
said  to  be  very  large.  It  is  well  to  know  that  there  are 
many  varieties,  and  that  some  are  far  inferior  to  others ; 
so  if  you  eat  one  and  it  does  not  please  you,  don't  be 
rash  and  say  you  do  not  like  grapefruit.  Try  the  other 
kinds.  The  best  are  neither  too  sour  nor  too  bitter,  and 
they  have  a  "wild"  fragrance  as  exquisite  in  its  way  as 
the  marine  tang  of  live  oysters.  When  you  get  one  of 
these  you  need  none  of  the  sugar,  or  the  liqueur,  or 
maraschino  cherries  nearly  always  served  with  grape- 
fruit. Just  peel  off  the  yellow  skin,  cut  the  fruit  length- 
wise, separate  the  sections  with  your  fingers,  remove  the 
membranes,  and  you  have  a  pile  of  pulp  resembling  so 
many  crab  tails,  which  dissolve  in  the  mouth  and  flood 
the  palate  with  ambrosial  Flavor. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       435 

Oranges  are  good,  but  grapefruit  is  as  superior  to 
them  as  sour  cherries  are  to  sweet. 

One  of  England's  chief  claims  to  gastronomic  dis- 
tinction is  that  her  orchards  include  plenty  of  sour- 
cherry  trees.  A  common  French  name  for  tart  cherries 
is  cerises  anglaises^  which  seems  to  indicate  that  they 
are  an  importation  from  England. 

Epicures,  from  the  ancient  Lucullus,  who  introduced 
the  sour  cherry  into  Europe,  to  Paderewski,  who  eats 
no  others,  agree  that,  thoroughly  ripened^  it  is  far  su- 
perior in  Flavor  to  the  sweet  cherry,  besides  being  more 
delicate,  melting,  digestible  and  wholesome.  On  a 
warm  day  nothing — not  even  a  glass  of  lemonade  or 
limeade — is  so  agreeably  refreshing  as  a  handful  of 
Early  Richmonds,  Morellos,  Montmorencys,  or  Bald- 
wins. 

A  British  expert  claims  that  "despite  the  sunshine 
and  climate  of  France,  the  quality  and  flavor  of  cherries 
grown  in  England  are  much  superior  to  those  of  the 
foreign  fruit." 

Of  no  product  of  his  island  is  the  Englishman  more 
boastful  than  of  his  strawberries.  Big  they  certainly 
are,  and  beautiful;  also  fragrant  after  a  few  days  of 
sunshine.  Freshness,  which  is  of  such  great  impor- 
tance in  the  case  of  these  berries,  is  secured  by  growing 
them  in  enormous  quantities  within  a  twenty-mile 
radius  of  London.  They  are  picked  early — often  by 
the  light  of  lanterns — brought  to  the  city,  and  deliv- 


436  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

ered  to  families  for  breakfast  a  few  hours  later.  Usu- 
ally they  are  carefully  graded,  and  you  get  what  you 
order  and  pay  for,  be  it  "specials,"  "firsts,"  or  "sec- 
onds." 
r  After  all,  the  big  strawberries,  however  luscious,  are 
seldom  so  fragrant  as  the  little  French  f raises  des  bois^ 
or  strawberry  of  the  woods.  These  are  imported  to 
some  extent;  yet  a  writer  in  the  London  "Telegraph" 
remarks  that  "if  home-growers  were  to  market  tiny 
specimens  with  ambrosial  flavor  there  would  be  no  sale 
for  the  fruit,  nor  would  the  wild  strawberry  of  our 
hedgerows  be  appreciated  by  the  pampered  gourmets  of 
London."  If  this  is  true,  something  must  be  wrong 
with  these  same  pampered  gourmets.  Perhaps  the  wild 
berries  are  less  fragrant  than  in  France.  In  Oregon,  as 
you  drive  along  wood  roads  and  fields,  the  air  is  heavy 
with  the  fragrance  of  wild  strawberries.  But  the  rich- 
est perfume  of  the  kind  I  ever  inhaled  was,  strange  to 
say,  in  the  far  north — the  Norwegian  city  of  Molde, 
where  two  bowls  of  strawberries  on  the  table  made  the 
hotel  dining-room  smell  like  an  Oriental  rose  garden. 
It  was  in  Norway,  too,  that  I  ate  the  best  sour  cherries 
I  ever  tasted. 
p  The  fame  of  the  British  gooseberry  has  crossed  the 
Atlantic,  the  jam  made  from  it  being  purchasable  in 
all  the  larger  grocery  stores  throughout  the  United 
States  and  Canada.  The  gooseberry  is  indigenous  to 
Great  Britain,  where  it  flourishes  particularly  well  be- 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       437 

cause  it  does  not  need  or  desire  much  sunshine.  This 
is  doubtless  the  reason  why  the  British  berry  is  superior 
to  the  American.  I  have  read  in  a  London  journal 
that  "American  visitors  are  highly  appreciative  of  the 
flavor  of  English  gooseberries,  as  those  of  their  own 
country  are  not  nearly  so  good.  In  hotels  largely  fre- 
quented by  Transatlantic  guests  there  is  quite  a  brisk 
demand  for  the  fruit,  especially  the  large  yellow 
'sulphur'  berry  and  the  'white  lion.'  As  judges  of  fruit 
Americans  are  proverbially  keen,  and  their  selections 
are  usually  worth  following."  . 

MARMALADES,    JAMS,    AND    BREAKFASTS. 

In  the  matter  of  bottled  condiments,  sauces,  walnut, 
mushroom,  tomato  and  other  catsups,  diverse  pickles, 
and  biscuits  in  endless  variety  (of  which,  as  of  the 
bottled  things,  millions  of  dollars'  worth  are  exported 
annually),  Great  Britain  is  also  preeminent;  and  what 
is  particularly  commendable  is  that  British  products  for 
export  are  usually  made  as  conscientiously  as  those  for 
home  consumption.  You  can  buy  them  in  a  Japanese 
village,  and  be  as  sure  of  their  excellence  as  if  you  got 
them  in  London. 

Gladstone  was  a  great  believer  in  jam.  He  con- 
stantly urged  his  countrymen  to  eat  more  of  it  and 
induced  a  number  of  them  to  go  into  the  manufactur- 
ing business.  Some  of  these  lost  money  because  the 
thing  was  overdone  for  a  time. 


438  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

While  good  jams  and  jellies  are  made  in  many  coun- 
tries, in  the  matter  of  marmalade,  Scotland  has  a 
virtual  monopoly  so  far  as  superexcellence  is  concerned. 

Open  an  American  cook  book  and  you  will  find  that 
the  directions  for  making  orange  marmalade  begin  with 
the  words,  "Take  one  dozen  oranges  and  four  lemons," 
and  end  with  the  information  that  when  bitter  marma- 
lade is  desired  the  bitter  can  be  obtained  by  soaking  the 
orange  seeds  overnight  and  adding  the  water  drained 
from  them  to  the  other  ingredients. 

A  marmalade  thus  obtained  is  better  than  no  marma- 
lade at  all,  but  it  is  far  inferior  to  the  British  product, 
which  is  made  of  special  varieties  of  oranges. 

Inquiries  having  come  from  firms  in  the  United 
States,  the  authorities  in  Washington  asked  Com- 
mercial Agent,  John  M.  Carson,  to  find  out  the  secret  of 
the  superior  Flavor  of  Scotch  marmalade. 

The  information  he  obtained  is  so  instructive  that  I 
must  quote  it,  in  part,  from  the  "Daily  Consular  and 
Trade  Reports"  of  February  17,  1911: 

British  marmalade  is  produced  from  sour  oranges  and  sugar. 
The  best-known  firms  use  almost  exclusively  the  Seville  (Spain) 
bitter  orange,  w^hich  has  comparatively  little  pulp  and  consists 
mainly  of  rind,  the  substance  most  desirable  for  the  making  of 
good  marmalade.  Messina  and  Palermo  ''bitter"  oranges,  al- 
though not  considered  as  good  as  those  of  Seville,  are  also  used, 
but  command  a  much  lower  price.  With  the  exception  of  a 
very  few  firms  who  buy  and  "pulp"  oranges  at  Seville  and  ship 
the  pulp  to  England  for  preparation  and  canning  by  English 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       439 

factories,  marmalade  manufacturers  buy  the  raw  material  in  open 
market.  London,  Liverpool,  Manchester,  and  Hull  are  the 
principal  orange  markets.  The  grower  ships  his  product  to  his 
agents  or  to  orange  brokers  or  auctioneers,  and  it  is  then  put  up 
for  sale  to  the  highest  bidder  on  a  given  date,  in  lots  of  scores, 
hundreds,  or  thousands  of  boxes,  very  much  like  wheat  and  other 
produce  are  sold  in  their  respective  exchanges,  with  the  exception 
that  in  the  case  of  oranges  there  are  no  "future  sales,"  nor  are 
"reserve"  prices  made. 

Oranges  being  perishable,  and  their  attractiveness  and  fresh- 
ness continuing  for  so  short  a  time,  the  brokers  accept  the  high- 
est bids  made  on  the  day  of  sale  and  never  reserve  the  fruit  tor 
future  offerings.  The  sales  are  held  regularly  on  what  are 
known  as  "market  days."  The  character,  quantities,  qualities, 
and  nativity  of  the  fruit  are  made  known  to  the  trade  by  cata- 
logue several  days  in  advance,  consequently  the  auctions  are 
always  well  attended  and  the  bidding  spirited.  The  London 
Fruit  Exchange  is  located  in  the  eastern  section  of  the  city  in  a 
large  structure  known  as  the  "Monument  Building."  More 
than  $12,000,000  per  annum  is  the  amount  required  to  pay  for 
the  oranges  sold  in  the  English  market,  the  great  bulk  of  the 
sales  being  by  public  auction.  Apples  are  sold  in  like  manner, 
the  aggregate  annual  sales  averaging  in  value  $10,000,000. 
The  great  Covent  Garden  market,  in  the  heart  of  London,  buys 
its  supplies  of  fruits  at  the  regular  auction  sales  held  at  the  Lon- 
don Exchange,  and  in  turn  the  retail  dealers  are  supplied  from 
Covent  Garden.     .     .     . 

The  law  requires  that  marmalade  shall  be  composed  of 
orange  and  sugar  exclusively,  and  if  any  other  substance  is  em- 
ployed, no  matter  for  what  purpose,  the  manufacturer  is  liable 
to  a  heavy  fine.  It  is  generally  conceded  that  the  law  is  ob- 
served by  English  manufacturers.  Fruit  preservers  as  a  rule 
use  refined  cane  sugar,  which  they  buy  in  the  open  market. 

Orange    marmalade    has    made    Scotland    famous 


440  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

throughout  the  gastronomic  world,  which  seems  odd  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  the  country  is  too  far  north  to 
raise  oranges. 

We  shall  see  in  the  last  chapter  that  the  appreciation 
of  bitter  marks  a  higher  stage  of  gastronomic  culture 
than  the  liking  for  sweets  or  even  for  sour.  The 
best  orange  marmalade  is  always  bitter,  and  to  this  it 
owes  not  only  much  of  its  agreeable  taste  but  its  value 
as  a  tonic,  the  rind  of  the  bitter  orange  being  a  valuable 
stomachic.  It  is  therefore  not  strange  that  although 
there  are  many  makers  of  this  delicacy,  the  home  de- 
mand often  exceeds  the  supply,  and  that  the  new  crop 
always  is  eagerly  looked  forward  to.  It  has  been 
claimed,  with  some  show  of  reason,  that  British  sturdi- 
ness  is  largely  a  result  of  the  national  custom  of  having 
bitter  marmalade  regularly  served  with  breakfast. 

Breakfast!  That  word  suggests  another  great 
service  Britannia  has  done  the  gastronomic  world. 
Nothing  could  be  more  irrational  for  normal  persons 
than  the  continental  habit  of  eating  only  bread  and  but- 
ter for  breakfast  and  then  having  a  second,  heavier 
breakfast — dejeuner  a  la  fourchette — at  eleven  or 
twelve  o'clock  to  interrupt  the  morning's  work  in  its 
full  tide.  Far  better,  both  economically  and  hygienic- 
ally,  is  the  English  way — which  fortunately  we  have 
adopted — of  having  a  substantial  breakfast,  and  then 
nothing  more  till  lunch  time,  the  best  hour  for  which  is 
one  o'clock,  as  most  of  us  know  instinctively. 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       441 

A  healthy  person  ought  to  have  a  good  appetite  in  the 
morning,  after  a  night's  rest,  and  gratify  it.  Lunch 
should  be  light,  and  dinner,  more  substantial  than 
breakfast,  should  begin  not  later  than  seven  for  persons 
who  retire  at  an  hour  conducive  to  longevity — that  is, 
an  early  hour. 

RESTAURANTS,    CAKES,    AND    PLUM    PUDDING. 

As  a  rule,  British  inns  and  restaurants  serve  food  as 
badly  cooked  as  it  is  in  American  "hash  houses,"  if  not 
more  so.  I  have  had  experiences  with  meat  pies  and 
sausages,  with  several  kinds  of  pastry  and  with  taste- 
less vegetables  that  quite  recalled  the  Arizona  days 
before  Fred  Harvey  came  from  England — as  related  in 
the  first  chapter  of  this  book — to  civilize  our  South- 
west. 

Adulteration  of  foods  is  largely  practised,  and  many 
of  them  are  denatured  by  the  use  of  chemical  preserva- 
tives, although  in  these  respects  there  has  been  consid- 
erable improvement  since  the  "Lancet"  exposed  "the 
appalling  state  of  the  food  supply"  and  fearlessly  gave 
the  names  and  addresses  of  hundreds  of  manufacturers 
and  tradesmen  who  sold  adulterated  articles. 

It  was  hoped  that  with  the  introduction  of  motoring 
there  would  come  a  revival  of  the  good  old  coaching 
inns;  but  nothing  of  the  sort  has  happened.  According 
to  the  gastronomic  editor  of  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette" 
what  the  touring  motorist  gets  is  "probably  an  Amer- 


442  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

ican  preserved  soup  which  tastes  like  boiled  blankets,  a 
few  sardines,  stale  and  too  long  opened,  a  joint  which 
has  either  been  overcooked  or  under-done,  a  sodden  pan- 
cake with  no  suggestion  of  the  real  thing,  and  a  piece  of 
cheese  which  is  obviously  non-British.  And  for  this 
he  is  charged  at  least  five  shillings.  .  .  .  On  the 
Continent  one  can  get  an  excellently  cooked  and  served 
meal  for  half  the  price." 

While  the  English  are  thus  their  own  severest  critics, 
they  do  not  hesitate,  when  brought  to  bay,  to  present 
the  other  side  of  the  shield.  In  commenting  on  the 
Exhibition  of  the  Cookery  and  Food  Association  in 
1912,  the  London  "Telegraph"  called  attention  to  the 
fact  that  "typical  dishes  are  served  to  perfection  every 
day  on  innumerable  English  tables";  and  the  writer 
just  quoted,  referring  to  the  fact  that  France,  Austria, 
Hungary,  Italy,  and  Switzerland  had  sent  over  experts 
to  show  how  things  are  done  in  their  countries,  goes  on 
to  say  that  "it  might  humbly  be  suggested  that  our 
own  cooks  might  show  the  foreigners  something.  Few 
cooks,  other  than  English,  can  cook  whitebait  satisfac- 
torily; the  same  applies  to  Irish  stew,  steak,  and  kidney 
pudding  with  larks  and  oysters,  to  liver  and  bacon,  to 
tripe  and  onions  (no,  not  tripe  a  la  mode  de  Caen),  to 
a  really  good  devil,  and  above  all,  to  curry,  wet  or  dry. 
.  .  .  It  is  really  about  time  that  the  British  cook 
asserted  himself." 

A  German  lexicographer  calls  attention  to  the  fact 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       443 

that  the  United  Kingdom  has  contributed  at  least  half 
a  dozen  words  to  the  international  dining-room  lan- 
guage: Beefsteak,  roast  beef,  Irish  stew,  mock-turtle 
soup,  pudding,  and  toast.  He  might  have  added 
marmalade  and  cakes.  A  firm  in  Germany  once  of- 
fered a  thousand  marks  for  a  good  Teutonic  equivalent 
for  "cakes" ;  with  what  success  I  do  not  know. 

It  is  not  strange  that  Continental  manufacturers  are 
so  much  interested  in  these  British  cakes  and  biscuits. 
They  are  favorites  the  world  over  because  of  their 
crispness  and  good  Flavor,  and  the  exports  of  them 
amount  to  about  £1,400,000  a  year. 

Seven  million  dollars!  Is  there  a  better  guide  to 
wealth  than  gastronomy,  the  art  of  preparing  and 
serving  appetizing  food*? 

Plum  pudding  is  another  profitable  product  of  Brit- 
ish manufacturing  skill. 

Though  it  has  been  traced  to  a  Teutonic  origin 
{Ffiaumen-grutze)  it  is  now  characteristically  Angli- 
can, and  the  plum  (Fflaume)  has  disappeared.  In 
that  monumental  compendium  of  English  philological 
erudition,  Murray's  "New  English  Dictionary,"  we 
read  as  one  of  the  definitions  of  Plum:  "a  dried  grape 
or  raisin  as  used  for  puddings,  cakes,  etc.,"  and  the  editor 
adds:  "This  use  probably  arose  from  the  substitution 
of  raisins  for  dried  plums  or  prunes  as  an  ingredient  in 
plum-broth, — porridge,  etc.,  with  retention  of  the  name 
plum  for  the  substituted  article." 


444  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

Considering  the  national  liking  for  this  pudding  it 
is  not  surprising  that  the  word  plum  for  this  favorite 
was  retained,  for  "plum"  also  stands  for  tit-bit,  or  a 
good  thing  in  general.  As  long  ago  as  1660  devotion 
to  this  dish  was  amusingly  illustrated  by  these  words  in 
a  mock  sermon :  ''But  there  is  your  Christmas  pye  and 
that  hath  plums  in  abundance.  .  .  .  He  that  dis- 
covered the  new  Star  in  Cassiopeia  .  .  .  deserves 
not  half  so  much  to  be  remembered,  as  he  that  first 
married  minced  meat  and  raisins  together." 

Until  a  few  years  ago  the  English  housewife  always 
boiled  her  own  plum  pudding.  To-day  she  can  buy  it 
if  she  desires.  It  is  made  by  machinery;  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  pounds  are  shipped  to  other  countries  an- 
nually; and  it  is  claimed  that  this  kind  is  as  a  rule  su- 
perior in  Flavor  and  digestibility  to  the  home-made. 
It  was  during  the  Boer  war  that  the  export  business 
received  its  first  great  impulse,  thousands  of  pounds 
being  sent  to  the  soldiers  in  Africa  to  give  them  a  taste 
of  the  Christmas  dinner  at  home ;  and  now  the  pudding 
is  made  in  such  large  quantities  that  the  United  States 
Government  has  begun  to  take  cognizance  of  it  in 
official  reports.  In  the  "Consular  and  Trade  Reports" 
(1911)  Commercial  Agent,  John  M.  Carson,  had  a  two- 
page  communication  from  which  I  cite  the  following: 

The  extent  and  magnitude  of  the  trade  may  be  inferred  from 
figures  furnished  by  one  of  the  several  large  manufacturers.  In 
order  to  be  prepared  to  meet  the  demand  for  their  product, 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       445 

manufacturers  begin  active  operations  as  soon  as  the  new  crops 
of  raisins,  currants,  and  other  required  fruits  appear  in  Septem- 
ber. All  the  constituents  of  plum  pudding,  which  do  not  in- 
clude plums,  are  prepared  and  manipulated  by  elaborate  and 
expensive  machinery.  Currants  are  washed  and  stems  removed, 
raisins  are  stoned,  nuts  are  shelled  and  ground,  oranges  and 
lemons  are  peeled,  the  peel  candied  and  cut  up,  eggs  are  beaten, 
and  all  other  ingredients  prepared  by  machinery.  The  manu- 
facturing firm  alluded  to,  in  order  to  supply  their  trade  this 
season,  used  the  materials  and  quantities  given  below. 


Pounds. 

Currants    145,800 

Sugar   101,250 

Peel    72,360 

Suet    72,360 

Bread   crumbs 72,360 

Flour   54,000 

Raisins  48,330 


Pounds. 

Sultanas    48,330 

China  ginger 3,5 10 

Spices      1,440 

Almonds    . 400 

Milk,    gallons 948 

Rum,  gallons 948 


Exclusive  of  milk  and  rum,  the  ingredients  above  enumer- 
ated aggregate  620,140  pounds  used  by  a  single  manufacturer 
in  supplying  plum  pudding  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  Christ- 
mas season  of  1910,  the  number  of  puddings  furnished  aggre- 
gating 250,000.  There  are  three  or  four  other  London  manu- 
facturers each  of  whose  output  perhaps  equaled  that  described, 
and  there  are  a  large  number  of  smaller  establishments  in  which 
plum  pudding  was  supplied  for  home  and  foreign  consumption. 

The  pudding  is  put  up  in  packages  weighing  one  to  five 
pounds  each  and  securely  packed  to  insure  preservation  and  safe 
transportation.  Properly  prepared  and  packed  the  plum  pud- 
ding of  England,  with  ordinary  care  on  the  part  of  the  house- 
wife, will  retain  its  virtues  for  a  year  or  more. 

Plum  pudding  has  the  evil  repute  of  being  indigesti- 
ble.    An  English  friend  informs  me  that  while  it  cer- 


446 


FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 


tainly  is  so  if  boiled  only  three  hours,  as  is  usually  done, 
it  becomes  as  digestible  as  good  bread  if  boiled  seven 
hours.     It  is  then  compact  and  yet  brittle. 

Still  another  profitable  branch  of  the  aft  of  prepar- 
ing appetizing  food  is  that  of  the  cheesemaker.     If  im- 


Ye   Olde   Cheshire   Cheese 

itation  is  the  sincerest  form  of  flattery,  the  English 
makers  of  Cheddar  cheese  have  been  flattered  as  few 
mortals  have;  for  in  the  United  States,  as  well  as  in 
Canada  and  Australia,  most  of  the  cheese  made  is  of 
the  Cheddar  type.  There  would  thus  be  no  cause  for 
exporting  Cheddar,  even  if  England  had  any  to 
spare;  nor  is  much  of  the  Cheshire  sent  abroad,  its 
fragile  nature  making  it  unsuitable  for  exportation, 
which  is  to  be  regretted,  because  in  the  opinion  of  Dr. 
Voelker,  shared  by  many  epicures,  Cheshire  is  the  finest 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       447 

flavored  of  British  cheeses.  It  is  made  from  milk 
which  is  perfectly  sweet,  and  to  this  its  special  aroma 
has  been  attributed.  For  the  third  of  the  three  best- 
known  varieties  of  British  cheeses — Stilton — there  is  a 
considerable  demand  for  the  tables  of  foreign  epicures, 
as  it  exports  well. 

Stilton  is  a  blue-molded  cheese,  which  is  manufac- 
tured of  unskimmed  milk  in  a  way  similar  to  the 
methods  of  making  the  French  Roquefort  and  the 
Italian  Gorgonzola.  Like  those,  it  owes  its  piquant 
Flavor  to  the  mold,  which  is  artificially  spread  through- 
out the  cheese  in  diverse  ways.^ 

Every  American  tourist  who  visits  London  goes  to 
take  a  meal  at  Ye  Olde  Cheshire  Cheese,  made  famous 
by  Dr.  Johnson  and  Oliver  Goldsmith,  and  for  three 
centuries  the  haunt  of  literary  men,  including  Dickens 
and  Thackeray.  Toasted  cheese — cheese  bubbling  in 
tiny  tins  and  tasting  like  Welsh  rarebit — was  the  orig- 
inal specialty  of  this  place  and  is  still  served  unless  you 
prefer  a  wedge  of  uncooked  Cheshire.  But  what  ulti- 
mately made  this  place  renowned  throughout  the  world 
was  its  lark  pudding. 

Fortunately  it  is  lark  no  more  but  pigeon  pudding; 
at  least,  so  it  was  frankly  called  when  I  ate  it  in  Sep- 
tember, 1912.  What  else  it  is  compounded  of  no  one 
knows  but  the  proprietor  and  the  cook,  who  guard  the 

1  For  details  regarding  British  cheeses  see  "Cheese  and  Cheese  Mak- 
ing," by  Jaraes  Long  and  John  Benson.    London:  Chapman  &  Hall. 


HAUNCH   OF  VENISON,  3/6.     Thi«  day  at  6  o'clock. 

Friday,  13th  September,  1912. 

'BILL  OF  FATiE. 

Ready  from  12  noon  to  9.30  p  ii.  s.     d. 

SIMPSON'S    FISH    DINNER,    consisting    of 

three  kinds  of  Fish 39 

Dinner  from  the  Joint  -        -        ...        2    6 

Dinner  from  one  Special  Dish      -        -        -        -        2    6 
Dinner  from  one  Special  Dish,  with  Joint  to  follow        3    o 
Dinner  from  two  Special  Dishes  .--.36 
Tbb  above  prices  include  Vegetables.  CheeseT.  Bread  amd  BirrrsR,  and  Salad. 

Sointa,  2/6 

served  Fbeshlt  Cooked  at  the  following  hours. 


rtoM 
12.0 


9.30 


1.0 


Saddle  of  Mutton 
Roast  Sirloin  of  Beef 
Saddle  of  Mutton.    Eoast  Sirloin  Beef 
Boiled  Beef 
Forequarter  Lamb 
,  Roast  Loin  of  Pork 


5.30  Boiled  Beef 

Roast  Sirloin  of  Beef.   Saddle  of  Mutton 
6.0     Saddle  of  Mutton 

Roast  Sirloin  of  Beef 

Forequarter  Lamb 
7.30  Saddle  of  Mutton 
6.0    Haunch  of  Venison,  3/6 


THE  ABOVE  PRICES  INCLUDE  VBOBTABLES,  CHEESEf,  BREAD  AND  BUTTER,  AMD  SALAa 


Turtle,  clear  or  thick 

Green  Pea 

Scotch  Hotch-Potch 

Ox  Tail,  clear  or  thick 
Thick  Mock  Turtle 
KOTE.' 


Soup0. 

d. 


Clear  Mock  Turtle  * 
Julienne .  •  . 
Macaroni 

Gravy    -        •        • 
Vermicelli 
Tomato 
Tf  served  with  Joint  or  Special  Dish  to  follow.  6d.  less  will  be  crasceo  fob 

EACH  OF  THE  ABOVB. 

iTisb. 

Boiled  Salmon  and  Lobster  Sauce       -        ^ 
Boiled  Turbot  and  Lobster  Sauce 

Curried  Turbot 

Fried  Turbot 

Sole  Souchet       -...-. 
Salmon  Cutlets  and  Piquant  or  Indian  Sauce 

Curried   Prawns 

Fresh  Herrings  and  Mustard  Sauce 


Freshly  cooked  Salmon  and  Turbot  {the  whole  fish)  served  dailt  from  12  noon  to  9.30  p.m. 


Fish  Pie 

Fish  Bolls  or  Cakes 

Fried  Whiting 
Whitebait 


Stewed  Eels,  Port  Wine  or  Parsley 

and  Butter  Sauce      •        .        -  1 

Fillet  of  Sole,  Fried  or  Boiled  t        •  2 

Sole,  Fried,  Grilled  or  Boiled  -        -  2 


NOTE.— If  served  with  Joint  or  Special  Dish  to  follow.  6A  less  will  be  charged  fob 

EACH  OF  THE  ABOVB. 


Plain  Lobster 
Lobster  Mayonnaise 


Lobster  Salad 
Salmon  Mayonnaise 


WHITSTABLE  NATIVE  OYSTERS,  3/-  per  dozen. 

THE  CHEDDAR  AND  CHESHIRE  CHEESES  SERVED  HERB 


HAUNCH  OF  VENISON,   3/6.     This  day  at  6  o'clock. 


Special  Wi0l)C6,  2/6. 

HAM  AI^D  PEAS.  HASHED  VENISON. 

STEWED  NECK  OF  LAMB  AND  PEAS. 

Curried  Chicken  Chicken  Marengo 

Fricass6  Chicken  Stewed  Pigeon 


Hancot  Mutton 

Curried  Fillets  of  Mutton 


Stewed  Rump  Steak  Stewed  Kidneys 

Thb  abovb  prices  include  Vegetables.  CHEESEf   Bread  and  BurrER,  and  Salad. 

FROM  THE  GRILL  (15  to  30  minutes.) 

8.     d 


Mutton  Cutlets,  Tomato  or  Piquant 

Sauce 2    6 

Rupip  Steak  •        •        -26 

Grilled  Fowl  and  Mushroom  Sauce      -    3     0 


Porterhouse  Steak  •  ... 

(,  „  for  two 

Mixed     Grill  — Chop,     Kidney    and 

Sausage     


The  above  prices  include  Vegetables.  CHEESEt,  Bread  and  Butter,  and  Salad. 


10   f  Chump  Chop- 
mins.!,  Loin  Chop     • 


-     1 


IQ    f  Two  Kidneys 
mins.l  Lamb  Chops 


(Bame. 

PARTRIDGES  5/-  each. 


GROUSE  5/-  each. 


Beetroot.  3d. 


lD€aetablc0. 

NEW  PEAS.  6d.  per  portion. 

Tomato,  Plain,  3d.  Tomato,  Grilled,  4d. 

Cucumber,  3d. 


Tapioca  Pudding 

Mixture  of  Fruit 
Orange  Fritters  • 
Apple  Fritters     • 
Madeira  Jelly 
Damson  Pie 


Swccte. 

6d. 
6d. 
6d. 
6d. 
6d. 
6d. 


Strawberry  Cream 
Pineapple  Water 


Anchovy  Toast,  Fish  or  Paste 
Macaroni  with  Cheese 
Macaroni  with  Tomatoes 
Welsh  Rarebit    • 
Buck  Rarebit 
Scotch  Woodcock 


3cc0. 


9d. 
9d. 


$9un&rled. 


Olives 


9d. 
6d. 
6d. 
6d. 
9d. 
1/3 


Anchovies,  Plain 
Poached  Eggs  on  Toast 
Sardines  on  Toast 
Bloaters  Roes  on  Toast 
Stewed  Cheese  - 
Red  Currant  Jelly 
6d. 


2    6 


1  3 

2  6 


Prunes  and  Rice 

-     6d. 

Apple  Pie           ... 

-     6d. 

College  Pudding  • 

-     6d. 

Sweet  Omelette  • 

l/- 

Lemon  Pudding 

6d. 

St.  Clair  Pudding 

.     6d 

Rum  Omelette    • 

.        .    1/6 

6d. 
9d. 
9d. 
94 


3d. 


Tea,  per  cup,  6d. 


Zea  anb  Cottec. 

Tea,  per  pot,  !/-  Coffee,  small  cup,  4d.,  large,  6d.  Cream,  3d» 

®C06ert. 

PEARS,  6d.  each.  Almonds  and  Raisms,  9d.  APPLES,  3d.  each. 


Attendance.  3d   each  person  charged  in  the  Bill. 

FINE   OLD   TAWNY   PORT.    8d     PER   GLASS. 

BASS  &  CO  S  PALE  ALE  ON  Draught 


WHITSTABLE  NATIVE  OYSTERS.  3/-  per  dozen. 

OBTAINED  FIRST  PRIZE  AT  THE  DAIRY  SHOV/    1911. 


450  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

secret  carefully.  Kidney  and  steak  and  oysters  are 
hinted  at,  and  diverse  strong  spices  are  certainly  in  it. 

We  entered  the  kitchen,  but  did  not  see  the  immense 
bowl  that  holds  enough  for  sixty  or  seventy  people,  ac- 
cording to  the  booklet  of  ninety-two  pages  which  tells 
the  story  of  this  eating  place.  Nor  did  we  test  the  as- 
sertion that  you  can  have  two,  three,  or  four  helpings  of 
the  "pie"  if  you  chose. 

To  tell  the  plain  truth,  one  was  quite  enough  and 
more.  Never  in  all  my  wanderings — not  even  in 
Spanish  countries  where  cayenne  pepper  is  the  staff  of 
life — ^had  I  put  into  my  mouth  a  mess  so  peppered  and 
otherwise  overseasoned  as  this  same  fiery  pigeon  pie. 
And  the  taste  lingered  for  hours,  giving  me  time  to  call 
back  to  memory  all  that  I  had  read  about  the  condi- 
mental  atrocities  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  porpoise, 
the  whale,  the  seawolf  made  favorite  dishes ;  when  po- 
tatoes were  seasoned  with  nutmeg,  cinnamon,  pepper, 
lemon,  sugar,  and  rose  water;  and  meats  were  mal- 
treated even  more  barbarously. 

Quite  as  English  as  the  Cheshire  Cheese,  and  more  up 
to  date,  is  another  London  restaurant  which  all  Ameri- 
cans visit — Simpson's,  where  joints  are  wheeled  to 
you  on  little  tables  and  you  choose  the  particular  cut 
you  want.  A  glance  at  the  bill  of  fare  herewith  repro- 
duced will  interest  those  who  have  never  had  a  chance 
to  compare  English  with  American  menus. 

Colonel  Newnham-Davis  accomplished  the  task  of 


BRITISH    SPECIALTIES       451 

writing  a  book  of  three  hundred  and  seventy-six 
pages  on  the  restaurants  of  London  entitled  "Dinners 
and  Diners."  It  is  not  so  interesting  or  so 
useful  a  book  as  his  "Gourmet's  Guide  to  Europe," 
yet  it  succeeds  in  a  gossipy  way  in  giving  the 
atmosphere  of  these  places.  The  best  of  them  are  in 
most  respects  frankly  Parisian  in  cuisine  and  menu. 
The  epicurean  Colonel  found  four  dozen  among  them 
with  sufficient  individuality  to  claim  separate  chapters. 
Since  the  second  edition  of  this  book  appeared  (1910), 
some  of  the  old  houses  have  disappeared  and  many  new 
ones  of  the  highest  class  have  been  opened.  At  all  of 
them  you  can  get,  besides  French  dishes,  such  British 
specialties  as  turtle,  ox-tail,  and  mulligatawny  soups, 
venison,  rabbit,  or  veal  and  ham  pies,  and,  with  your 
fish  and  meats — hot  or  cold — all  the  fiery  gherkins, 
chow-chow,  and  diverse  pungent  sauces  and  catsups 
you  may  desire. 

While  these  sharp  condiments  are  for  the  most  part 
special  products  of  British  ingenuity  which  cannot  be 
duplicated  elsewhere,  it  is  likely  that  they  will  be  less  in 
demand  in  the  future  than  they  are  now.  They  were 
invented  to  go  with  cold  meats  chiefly,  and  to  give  zest 
and  varied  Flavor  to  the  monotonously  recurring  joints. 
But  this  monotony  is  disappearing;  the  number  of 
national  dishes  is  multiplying  rapidly;  and,  altogether, 
"there  is  now,"  as  a  London  journal  has  remarked,  "a 
cult  of  cookery  in  England  such  as  has  never  been 
before." 


XI 

GASTRONOMIC  AMERICA 

N  the  preceding  pages  I  have  neg- 
lected no  chance  to  expose  our  short- 
comings, not  with  any  muck-raking 
intentions  but  in  order  to  show  in 
how  many  ways  we  could  profit  by 
following  the  example  set  by  Euro- 
pean nations. 

It  is  now  time  to  raise  our  flag  and 
do  a  little  patriotic  boasting.  There  is  a  gastronomic 
America  as  well  as  an  ungastronomic  America;  we 
have  unequaled  opportunities  for  producing  the  best 
of  nearly  everything,  and  if  we  utilize  those  opportuni- 
ties, recognizing  the  all-importance  of  Flavor  in  food, 
in  its  various  stages  from  the  field  to  the  grill  and  the 

table,  we  can  easily  become,  within  a  few  decades,  a 

45a 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    453 

leading — ^perhaps  even  the  leading — gastronomic  na- 
tion. 

In  the  present  chapter  and  the  following  one  I  pur- 
pose to  dwell  on  some  of  the  delicacies  for  the  enjoy- 
ment of  which  at  their  best  Europeans  must  come  to 
America. 

SWEET    CORN    AND    CORN    BREAD. 

Probably  the  most  characteristically  American  thing 
a  summer  visitor  from  Europe  will  see  in  our  dining- 
rooms  is  the  eating  of  green  corn  off  the  cob.  To  be 
sure,  he  might  see  the  same  thing  in  visiting  the  Hin- 
doos or  South  Africans;  but  they  are  imitators,  we  the 
originators  of  this  delectable  habit. 

In  saying  "we"  I  mean  Americans  in  the  broadest 
sense  of  the  word,  including  the  red  Indians.  It  was 
they  who  first  cultivated  corn,  in  the  central  part  of  our 
hemisphere.  From  there  it  came  north,  and  Columbus 
took  it  to  Europe,  whence  it  reached  the  other  conti- 
nents. They  call  it  maize  in  Europe,  mealies  in  South 
Africa.  In  England  "corn"  means  wheat,  in  Scotland 
oats,  those  being  their  principal  crops  respectively.  In 
America  the  main  crop  still  is,  as  it  was  twenty  centuries 
ago,  Indian  corn,  which  therefore  is  of  all  things  edible 
the  most  thoroughly  American.     Three  cheers  for  corn ! 

In  Italy,  two-thirds  of  the  rural  population  subsist 
mainly  on  com,  which  is,  however,  eaten  nearly  always 
as  polenta  (mush),  alone  or  with  cheese,  fish,  or  meat; 


454  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

whereas  we  have  on  our  tables  an  almost  endless  variety 
of  corn  and  corn  products. 

The  red  man  set  the  example.  He  ate  green  corn. 
He  made  a  mush  of  ripe  corn,  pounding  it,  either 
parched  or  unparched,  into  a  coarse  meal.  He  mixed  it 
diversely  with  pumpkins,  nuts,  berries,  and  other  foods. 
Succotash  is  an  Indian  name  which  we  borrowed  from 
him,  together  with  the  dish  it  denotes — beans  and  un- 
ripe corn  cooked  together.  The  site  of  Montreal  was 
once  an  Indian  cornfield.  In  the  "dreadful  winter"  of 
1620-21  the  colonists  in  Plymouth  bought  "eight  hogs- 
heads of  corne  and  beanes"  from  the  Indians,  who 
taught  them  "bothe  ye  manner  how  to  set  it  and  after 
how  to  dress  and  tend  it." 

Yet  the  most  imaginative  Indian  could  never  have 
dreamt  of  how  amazingly  their  successors  on  the  soil 
would  multiply  the  uses  of  com,  for  the  table  and  for 
countless  industrial  uses.  We  now  have  cook  books 
concerned  solely  with  corn  foods. 

Mark  Twain's  appetizing  list  of  the  American  dishes 
he  missed  in  Europe,  to  which  reference  was  made  in 
the  first  chapter  of  this  book,  includes  fivt  made  of  corn : 
pone,  hoe-cake,  green  corn  on  the  ear,  green  corn  cut 
from  the  ear  and  served  with  butter  and  pepper,  and 
hominy.  Among  those  he  surely  would  have  men- 
tioned also,  had  he  happened  to  recall  their  merits  at 
the  moment,  are  samp,  gruel,  hulled  corn,  or  lye  hom- 
iny, Indian  pudding,  hasty  pudding,  pop-corn,  succo- 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    455 

tash,  Boston  brown  bread,  griddle  cakes,  johnny  cake, 
mock  oysters,  cream  of  corn,  Kentucky  corn  dodgers, 
and  cornmeal  gems. 

Welcome  as  all  these  specialties  and  many  others  are 
on  American  tables — fried  mush  and  hominy  are  partic- 
ularly to  be  commended  to  those  who  know  not  how 
tasty  they  are  for  breakfast,  or  as  a  dinner  course,  occa- 
sionally, in  place  of  the  everlasting  potatoes — none  of 
them — not  even  genuine  pone — is  quite  so  luscious  as 
green  corn. 

It  may  not  be  "elegant"  to  eat  sweet  corn  off  the  cob, 
but  that  is  the  only  way  to  get  its  full  Flavor.  There  is 
delicious  fragrance  in  the  juicy  cob,  too,  and  in  the 
bosom  of  your  family  it  is  permissible  (and  decidedly 
advisable)  to  suck  it.  Sugar  cane  and  oranges  are  not 
the  only  things  that  are  best  when  sucked. 

American  horticultural  ingenuity  has  achieved  won- 
ders in  developing  varieties  of  sweet  corn  with  new 
refinements  of  Flavor.  A  few  years  ago  C.  D.  Keller, 
of  Toledo,  Ohio,  originated  a  new  kind  which  he  called 
the  "Howling  Mob,"  which  "peculiar  but  apt  name," 
in  the  words  of  Mr.  Burpee,  "refers  to  the  vociferous 
demand  for  the  ears  when  Mr.  Keller  takes  them  to 
market." 

Great,  indeed,  is  the  demand  in  American  markets, 
homes,  and  hotels  for  green  corn,  and  much  ingenuity 
has  further  been  expended  in  rearing  early  and  late 
varieties  so  as  to  make  the  season  as  long  as  possible. 


456  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

Between  the  early  Malakoff,  from  Siberia,  and  the  late 
Country  Gentleman,  there  are  dozens  of  desirable 
varieties  the  characteristics  of  which  are  described  in 
the  catalogues  of  our  seedsmen.  The  last-named  has 
long  been  considered  the  sweetest  of  all  kinds,  but  the 
new  Golden  Bantam  is  a  formidable  rival.  Its  color, 
which  makes  it  look  like  ordinary  field  corn,  is  against 
it,  but  those  who  have  once  tasted  it,  sing  its  praises 
forevermore. 

It  is  related  that  the  Rev.  Sidney  Smith's  parishioners 
did  not  want  him  to  visit  America  for  fear  that  the 
allurements  of  canvasback  duck  might  tempt  him  to 
remain.  Sweet  corn,  also,  might  have  alienated  his 
patriotic  affections.  Covent  Garden,  to  be  sure,  some- 
times offers  so-called  green  corn,  but  England  has  too 
cool  nights  and  not  enough  sunshine  to  develop  the 
Flavor  of  this  vegetable. 

Even  in  America,  where  it  grows  to  perfection,  pains 
must  be  taken  if  one  wants  to  get  that  Flavor  at  its  best. 
All  who  have  lived  in  the  country  agree  with  Dr. 
Wiley's  dictum  that  "there  is  only  one  way  to  eat 
Indian  corn.  That  is  to  go  out  just  before  sun-up  and 
harvest  the  ears,  and  have  them  boiled  for  early  break- 
fast. To  people  in  cities  who  have  never  eaten  freshly 
harvested  Indian  corn,  such  an  experience  would  be  a 
revelation." 

Not  only  do  corn  cobs  that  are  kept  a  day  or  two  be- 
fore eating  lose  much  of  their  precious  fragrance,  but, 


GASTRONOMIC   AMERICA    457 

as  the  same  eminent  chemist  informs  us,  "corn  which  is 
perfectly  sweet  and  delicious  at  the  moment  of  harvest, 
has  been  found  to  lose  half  of  its  sugar  within  twenty- 
four  hours." 

Those  who  find  sweet  corn  indigestible  do  not  know 
how  to  eat  it.  If  a  sharp  knife  is  pressed  on  each  row 
of  kernels  the  skin — which  is  the  indigestible  part — is 
cut  and  remains  on  the  cob. 

While  the  demand  for  sweet  corn  is  ever  on  the 
increase  and  fortunes  are  made  by  those  who  grow  or 
handle  the  best — that  is,  the  most  agreeably  flavored — 
sorts,  the  foods  made  of  ripe  dried  corn  are  not  eaten 
so  generally  as  they  ought  to  be,  at  least  in  the  Northern 
States. 

It  is  desirable  that  everybody  should  know  the  in- 
teresting reason  for  the  fact,  known  to  all,  that  the 
South  is  more  addicted  than  the  North  to  the  eating 
of  dishes  made  of  corn. 

That  reason  is  very  simple:  corn  bread  in  the 
South  is  made  of  meal  which  has  more  Flavor  than  the 
meal  sold  in  the  Northern  States,  and  is  therefore  more 
appetizing  and  wholesome. 

Why  is  its  Flavor  better?  Because  it  is  made  of 
ground  corn  from  which  only  the  indigestible  hulls 
have  been  removed  by  bolting,  whereas  in  the  making 
of  meal  for  Northern  markets,  the  millers  remove  also 
the  germ  which  contains  the  fat  and  most  of  the  Flavor 
of  corn,  besides  its  most  important  mineral  contents. 


458  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

They  have  contrived  a  diabolical  machine  known  as 
the  "degerminator"  for  the  special  purpose  of  bolting 
out  the  germs,  that  is,  the  very  heart  and  soul,  of  the 
com. 

If  I  add  that,  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Charles  D.  Woods, 
Director  of  the  Maine  Agricultural  Experiment  Sta- 
tion "from  the  manufacturer's  standpoint  the  removal 
of  the  germ  does  not  represent  a  loss,  as  it  is  used  for 
the  manufacture  of  gluten  feeds — so  important  for 
live  stock — and  corn  oil,  which  has  many  industrial 
uses  and  is  used  to  some  extent  as  a  salad  oil  and 
as  a  culinary  fat" — the  reader  will  begin  to  suspect  one 
reason  why  the  millers  market  cornmeal  from  which 
its  most  valuable  constituent  has  been  removed. 

But  there  is  another  reason  for  this  dastardly  crime 
and  that  is  that  "the  germ  lowers  the  keeping  quality 
of  the  meal  because  its  abundant  fat  easily  becomes 
rancid.'' 

In  other  words  cornmeal  made  for  sale  in  the  North 
is  denatured  deliberately  in  order  that  the  miller  and 
the  grocer  may  not  run  the  risk  of  having  a  few  sacks 
of  it  spoil  on  their  hands  occasionally !  The  consumer 
is  not  considered  at  all. 

Ungastronomic  America  has  meekly  submitted  to 
this  outrage,  largely  because  the  facts  of  the  case  are 
not  generally  known.  Gastronomic  Americans,  whose 
numbers  are  increasing  rapidly,  will  insist  on  their 
rights,  refusing  to  buy  cornmeal  from  which  most  of 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    459 

the  Flavor  has  been  eliminated,  and  the  North  will  in 
time  eat  as  much  corn  bread  as  the  South. 

Personally,  I  agree  with  those  who  think  it  even 
more  tasty  than  wheat  bread.  The  only  advantage 
wheat  has  is  that,  with  yeast  or  baking  powder,  it  can 
be  made  into  a  lighter  and  more  porous  loaf;  but  this 
advantage  can  be  neutralized  by  baking  the  corn  bread 
in  thin  cakes ;  and  corn  bread  thus  made  is  far  more  di- 
gestible than  loaves  of  wheat  bread  as  ordinarily  made 
in  America.  A  good  quality  of  it  is  also  much  more 
easily  and  more  quickly  made  at  home.  Soldiers  and 
campers  prefer  it,  partly  for  this  reason.  "It  has  been 
said,"  writes  Dr.  Woods,  "that  johnny  cake  is  a  corrup- 
tion of  journey  cake,  and  that  corn  bread  was  so  called 
because  it  could  be  so  easily  prepared  on  the  road."  ^ 

GRIDDLE  CAKES  AND  MAPLE   SYRUP. 

Our  breakfasts,  more  than  other  meals,  are  made  de- 
lectable by  diverse  corn  dishes.  Corn  flakes,  properly 
made  are  more  flavorful  than  any  others,  and  of  all  the 
varieties  of  griddle  cakes,  so  dear  to  the  American 
palate,  none  quite  equals  those  made  of  corn.  If  these 
are  at  present  seen  less  frequently  on  bills  of  fare  than 
are  wheat,  rice,  or  buckwheat  cakes,  it  is  because  of 
the  way  in  which  cornmeal  is  usually  deprived  of 
what  most  appeals  to  the  palate. 

1  "Food  Value  of  Corn  and  Corn  Products."     Farmers'  Bulletin  No. 
298,    Washington,    1907. 


460  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

Griddle  cakes  made  of  wheat  are  widely  known  as 
flannel  cakes.  I  have  never  eaten  any  woolen  stuff, 
but  I  imagine  it  might  taste  a  good  deal  like  the  aver- 
age "flannel"  cake,  though  it  would  be  much  lighter. 
The  French  and  German  pancakes  are  far  superior  to 
our  wheat  cakes ;  but  even  to  these  I  prefer  the  Ameri- 
can corn  griddle  cakes,  for  which  the  whites  of  egg  have 
been  beaten  stiff  and  added  gradually;  and  I  bask  in 
the  proud  consciousness  that  my  preference  is  thor- 
oughly patriotic. 

The  liking  for  buckwheat  cakes  is  to  me  a  mystery 
and  always  has  been,  although  as  a  boy  I  used  to  eat 
them  with  rich  sausage  gravy,  which  made  them  palata- 
ble. Buckwheat  cakes  are  not  eaten  so  much  as  they 
used  to  be,  so  maybe  I  am  not  alone  in  disliking  them. 
For  the  gratification  of  those  who  do  like  them  I  quote 
from  the  New  York  "Sun"  a  characteristically  Ameri- 
can communication  from  "Middle  Aged": 

I  saw  in  a  store  window  to-day  a  sign  "New  Buckwheat,"  so 
I  know  people  still  eat  buckwheat;  but  I  doubt  if  it  is  as  much 
eaten  as  it  was  in  years  back,  say  in  the  days  when  I  was  a 
youngster. 

We  always  had  buckwheat  cakes  for  breakfast.  Mother, 
sometimes  father,  used  to  stir  the  batter  the  night  before  in  a 
curious  tall,  round,  straight  sided,  brown  earthenware  pot  with 
a  handle  on  it,  which  was  sacredly  reserved  for  that  purpose.  I 
have  never  seen  anywhere  at  any  time  another  pot  just  like  that 
one;  and  then  it  was  set  in  just  the  right  spot  by  the  kitchen 
stove,  for  the  batter  to  rise  through  the  night. 

In  the  morning  they  thinned  this  batter  out  just  a  little  with 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    461 

water  and  then  they  fried  the  cakes;  in  our  house  on  a  long 
double  griddle  that  covered  two  stove  holes  and  on  which  you 
could  cook  two  or  three  cakes  at  a  time. 

Every  morning  in  winter  we  had  those  buckwheat  cakes,  light 
as  a  feather,  and  with  them  we  always  had  sausages  or  pork 
chops;  and  such  sausages  and  pork  chops  I  have  never  seen  since. 
Sausages,  not  as  you  see  them  nowadays  as  big  around  as  a  cigar 
and  filled  with  some  sort  of  pasty  material,  but  big  sausages 
stuffed  with  meat  chopped  coarse  and  that  burst  open  when 
you  fried  them  as  if  anxious  to  reveal  to  you  their  delightful, 
savory  richness — I  hope  it  is  given  to  you  to  be  able  to  recall 
such  sausages;  and  pork  chops  from  pigs  country  raised  on  nearby 
farms,  a  delight  to  the  taste  and  always  tender. 

Whichever  we  had  that  morning,  whether  sausages  or  pork 
chops,  we  ate  the  sausage  or  the  pork  chop  gravy  on  the  cakes. 
Really  the  recollection  moves  me.  My  smiling  mother — 
Heaven  bless  her! — never  stinted  me  on  the  cakes;  she  gave  me 
all  I  could  eat.  My  father  when  I  asked  him  for  another  sau- 
sage would  sometimes  ask  me  good-naturedly  if  I  did  n't  think 
I  had  had  enough ;  but  he  always  handed  over  the  sausage.  And 
now,  if  you  won't  think  I  ami  quite  a  pig,  I  would  like  to  say 
that  I  used  to  eat  the  last  plate  not  with  gravy  but  with  butter 
and  molasses  on  them ;  later  we  came  to  have  syrup.  And  this 
sort  of  breakfast  never  did  me  any  harm.  There  is  a  popular 
delusion  that  the  ostrich  has  the  hardiest  of  all  stomachs,  but 
really  his  would  not  for  a  moment  bear  comparison  with  that 
of  the  growing,  outdoors  boy. 

The  serving  of  sausages  and  pork  chops  with  griddle 
cakes  is  not  so  customary  as  it  used  to  be;  usually  the 
cakes,  whether  wheat,  buckwheat,  rice,  or  corn,  are 
now  eaten  with  some  kind  of  syrup. 

The  syrup  served  with  our  griddle  cakes  is  as  char-      ^y 
acteristically  American  as  the  cakes  themselves,  or  as 


462  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

the  endless  variety  of  cereal  breakfast  foods,  one  or 
the  other  of  which  nearly  every  American  eats  daily, 
with  cream  and  sugar,  and  which  foreigners  know 
nothing  about.^ 

Strictly  speaking,  a  syrup  is  "the  direct  product  of 
the  evaporation  of  the  juice  of  a  sugar-yielding  plant 
or  tree  without  the  removal  of  any  of  the  sugar," 
whereas  molasses  is  "the  saccharine  product  which  is 
separated  from  sugar  in  the  process  of  manufacture." 
Commercial  "syrup"  is  usually  a  mixture  of  syrup, 
molasses  (of  which  there  are  many  grades)  and  other 
things.  Much  of  it  is  injurious  to  health,  and  house- 
wives who  wish  to  see  nothing  unwholesome  on  their 
breakfast  tables  should  read  what  Dr.  Wiley  has  to 
say  on  this  subject,  on  pp.  472-482  of  his  "Foods  and 
Their  Adulteration." 

The  sap  of  sugar  cane  and  sorghum  is  usually  good 
and  safe,  besides  being  American.  Even  more  so  is 
the  sap  of  the  maple. 

George  Washington  and  Bret  Harte  were  not  more 
thoroughly  and  exclusively  American  than  is  the  Acer 
saccharinum^  or  sugar  maple  tree.  Europe  nor  any 
other  continent  has  aught  to  match  it.  The  sugar 
made  from  its  sap  is  one  of  the  delicacies  discovered 
by   the  American   Indian.     The   early   white   settlers 

1  "Cereal  Breakfast  Foods"  is  the  title  of  Farmers'  Bulletin  No.  249, 
which  tells  about  their  composition,  variety,  digestibility,  cost,  adultera- 
tion, etc  American  magazines  thrive  on  the  advertisements  of  break- 
fast cereals. 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     463 

learned  from  him  how  to  make  it,  and  for  many  years 
it  was  the  only  sugar  they  had.  It  was  "dark  and 
ill-tasting"  compared  with  the  best  modem  product. 

In  their  appeal  to  the  sense  of  taste  all  sweet  syrups 
are  alike.  It  is  their  fragrance,  their  Flavor,  that 
makes  us  prefer  some  kinds  to  others.  The  Flavor  of 
maple  syrup  has  been  much  improved,  and  is  still  being 
improved,  by  perfecting  the  methods  of  tapping  the 
tree,  gathering  the  sap,  boiling  it,  and  storing  the  sweet 
product. 

Uncle  Sam  has  not  neglected  this  important  branch 
of  national  gastronomic  industry.  His  chemists  have 
been  at  work  to  ascertain  the  causes  of  the  souring  of 
the  sap  under  certain  conditions,  and  to  explain  why 
the  later  runs  do  not  have  so  pleasant  a  Flavor  as  the 
earlier  ones.  They  have  found  it  in  the  action  of 
micro-organisms. 

While  I  was  writing  this  chapter  I  received  from 
Washington  Farmers'  Bulletin  516,  a  brochure  of  46 
pages  in  which  the  making  of  maple  syrup  and  sugar 
is  fully  discussed,  with  detailed  directions  for  securing 
the  best-flavored  product.^  As  in  the  making  of  but- 
ter, many  things  have  to  be  done  and  many  avoided 
to  get  the  best  results,  but  they  are  worth  the  trouble. 

The  demand  for  genuine  maple  sugar  is  great,  and 
would  be  much  greater  still  if  adulteration  were  not  so 

1  "The  Production  of  Maple  Syrup  and  Sugar."  By  A.  Hugh  Bryan, 
Chief  Sugar  Laboratory,  Bureau  of  Chemistry,  and  William  F.  Hub- 
bard, Forest  Assistant,  Forest  Service,  1912. 


464  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

much  practised.  In  1910,  according  to  the  U.  S. 
Census  Reports,  the  maple  syrup  production  of  the 
country  was  4,106,418  gallons,  and  in  addition  to  this 
there  were  made  over  14,000,000  pounds  of  maple 
sugar. 

In  that  year  Ohio  led  all  the  States  in  the  produc- 
tion of  maple  syrup,  followed  by  New  York,  Vermont, 
Pennsylvania,  Indiana,  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  and  New 
Hampshire.  In  many  other  States  it  can  be  made  in 
paying  quantities.  Farmers  are  advised  to  attend  to 
this  industry  as  a  source  of  extra  income.  In  the  Bul- 
letin just  referred  to,  attention  is  called  to  two  im- 
portant economic  considerations:  "The  season  of  pro- 
duction comes  at  a  time  of  the  year  when  little  or  no 
other  work  can  be  done  on  the  farm,  thus  allowing 
the  aid  of  the  family  and  farm  help  for  the  boiling  and 
manufacture.  Moreover,  since  the  sugar  bushes  as 
a  general  rule  are  situated  on  hilly  country  that  would 
not  be  suitable  for  any  other  crop,  these  two  items 
could  hardly  be  placed  at  a  high  value  in  a  table  of 
costs." 

Every  farmer  who  lives  in  a  State  and  region  where 
the  sugar  maple  prospers  should  secure  Bulletin  516 
through  his  representative  in  Washington.  By  attend- 
ing strictly  to  the  matter  of  delicate  Flavor,  not  only 
can  the  industry  be  enormously  increased  at  home  but 
foreign  markets  can  easily  be  won.  Adulteration  must, 
however,  be  severely  curbed.     Under  present  condi- 


The   sugar   bush» 


466  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

tions  American  epicures  do  not  put  their  faith  in  gro- 
cers but  get  their  annual  supplies  early  every  year 
direct  from  the  producer.  It  is  best  when  freshly 
made,  and  unless  put  in  cans  and  sealed  while  still  hot 
it  gradually  loses  its  Flavor.  Syrup  made  of  dissolved 
maple  sugar  is  often  used,  but  it  is  less  delicately 
flavored  than  that  which  is  made  at  once  from  the  sap. 
Many  a  time  have  I  thanked  Heaven  that  I  was 
brought  up  in  the  country.  How  I  pity  those  persons 
who,  in  the  days  of  their  youth,  had  no  chance  to 
kneel  before  an  Acer  saccliarinum^  as  I  did  in  my  Mis- 
souri days  (only  a  few  miles  from  Mark  Twain's  birth- 
place, by  the  way)  and  drink  in  the  nectar  as  it 
trickled  through  the  spout  into  my  mouth.  It  was 
more  glorious  even  than  it  was  some  years  later  to 
suck  fresh  Oregon  cider  from  a  barrel  through  a  straw. 

APPLE    PIE   AND    CRANBERRIES. 

Is  pie  as  thoroughly  American  as  maple  syrup,  grid- 
dle cakes,  and  corn  breads 

An  American  is  likely  to  answer  "  Yes,"  while  an 
Englishman  might  say  "No." 

In  the  English  "Who's  Who"  the  "recreations"  of 
most  of  the  eminent  men  and  women  of  the  time  in 
Europe  and  America  are  referred  to.  Had  Theophile 
Gautier  lived  to  be  included  in  that  volume,  he  would 
have  probably  named  among  his  favorite  recreations 
"reading  the  dictionary,"  to  which  he  is  said  to  have 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    467 

been  much  addicted.  I  could  never  quite  see  the  fun 
of  this  diversion  till  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mur- 
ray's wonderful  Oxford  dictionary,  which  traces  the 
meaning  and  history  of  every  word  back  through  the 
centuries. 

Nothing,  surely,  could  be  more  interesting,  for  in- 
stance, than  to  read  in  this  work  that  the  first  refer- 
ence to  apple  pie,  so  far  as  known,  was  as  far  back  as 
1590,  when  Greene,  in  his  "Arcadia,"  wrote  the  line: 
"Thy  breath  is  like  the  steame  of  apple-pyes" — thus 
proving  himself,  as  I  may  add,  an  epicure  as  well  as  a 
poet  and  a  lover. 

On  another  page  we  read :  "The  pie  appears  to  have 
been  at  first  of  meat  or  fish;  doubtful  or  undefined 
uses  appear  in  16th  century;  fruit  pies  (also  called, 
especially  in  the  north  of  England  and  Ireland,  in  Scot- 
land, and  often  in  the  United  States,  tarts)  appear 
before  1600,  the  earliest  being  Apple-Pie." 

Were  these  apple  pyes  the  same  as  the  American 
apple  pie  of  our  day*?  I  doubt  it.  If  they  had  been, 
the  Britons  of  our  time  certainly  would  make  the  same 
kind,  but  they  don't.  Their  substitute  for  our  fruit 
pie  is  the  tart,  which  has  only  one  crust  and  is  other- 
wise different. 

Even  if  it  could  be  proved  that  we  got  our  fruit 
pie  from  England,  shape,  contents,  and  all,  I  still 
would  claim  it  as  a  national  American  dish — ^Ameri- 
can by  right  of  conquest,  improvement,  and  country- 


468  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

wide  use.  Millions  of  American  families  eat  it  daily, 
at  lunch  or  at  dinner.  The  poet  Emerson  even  ate  it 
at  breakfast,  and  when  a  guest  refused  it,  he  was  sur- 
prised and  exclaimed:  "What  is  pie  for^" 

You  can  make  a  fruit  pie  in  the  American  style  in 
Great  Britain  or  on  the  Continent,  but  you  cannot 
duplicate  its  excellence,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
European  fruit  is  rarely  as  tasty  as  American  fruit. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  in  the  'making  of  a  light, 
digestible  crust  most  American  cooks  could  learn  a 
lesson  from  foreign  pastry  cooks,  who  would  advise 
them,  among  other  things,  to  partly  bake  the  lower 
crust  or  glaze  it  with  white  of  egg  before  the  fruit  is  put 
in.  But,  after  all,  the  Flavor  of  the  fruit  is  the  all- 
important  thing,  and  in  that  the  American  pie  is 
supreme. 

The  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  in  his  eloquent  ser- 
mon on  apple  pie,  exclaimed :  "But,  oh !  be  careful  of 
the  paste!  Let  it  be  not  like  putty,  nor  rush  to  the 
other  extreme  and  make  it  so  flaky  that  one  holds  his 
breath  while  eating,  for  fear  of  blowing  it  away.  Let 
it  not  be  plain  as  bread,  yet  not  rich  like  cake." 

Has  ever  an  English  divine  paid  such  attention  to 
pie*?  No;  the  apple  pie  is  ours,  as  much  as  our 
flag. 

But  alack  and  alas,  the  apple  pie  is  often  insulted 
and  maltreated  in  its  own  bailiwick  by  being  over- 
seasoned.     Beecher  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    469 

"it  will  accept  almost  every  flavor  of  every  spice,"  and 
he  mentioned  nutmeg,  cinnamon,  and  lemon  as  among 
those  which  it  is  permissible  to  use. 

"Permissible,"  yes,  but  most  inadvisable.  You 
may  say  it  is  a  matter  of  taste,  and  that  you  have  a 
right  to  put  as  much  nutmeg,  cinnamon,  or  lemon  ex- 
tract into  your  pie  or  your  apple  sauce  as  you  please. 
If  you  make  it  for  yourself  and  your  family,  yes;  but 
not  if  you  make  it  for  a  restaurant.  The  spices  named 
are  penetrating  and  monopolistic;  even  in  small  quanti- 
ties they  obliterate  the  natural  Flavor  of  the  apple,  or 
at  least  modify  it  in  a  way  obnoxious  to  those  true 
epicures  who  like  their  fruit  dishes  au  naturel^  just  as 
they  like  prime  cuts  of  butcher's  meats  without  ob- 
trusive sauces,  and  sausage  mild-flavored,  without  the 
screaming  sage  or  too  much  pepper. 

Nutmeg  is  the  spice  with  which  our  apple  pie  is  most 
frequently  alloyed.  An  alloy  is  defined  as  "anything 
that  reduces  purity  or  excellence."  If  you  put  nut- 
meg into  apple  pie  or  sauce,  you  make  it  taste  always 
the  same,  be  it  made  of  European  or  American  fruit 
or  of  this  or  that  variety  of  apples.  Now,  to  an  epi- 
cure the  best  thing  about  apple  pie  or  sauce  is  that 
when  served  without  spice  it  retains  the  peculiar  Flavor 
of  the  kind  of  apple  it  is  made  from. 

To  go  to  your  grocer  and  buy  "cooking  apples"  is 
almost  as  bad  as  to  ask  for  "cooking  butter."  The 
best  butter  and  the  best  apples  should  always  be  used 


470  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

in  the  kitchen — if  you  can  afford  to  buy  them.  If  you 
cannot,  eat  oatmeal  and  prunes. 

To  those  who  have  refined  palates  it  makes  a  world 
of  difference  whether  their  apple  pie  and  sauce  are 
made  of  "cooking  apples"  or  of  Gravensteins,  Red 
Astrachans,  Newtown  Pippins,  or  Spitzenbergs.  Each 
variety — and  dozens  of  others  might  be  named — has 
its  own  special  charm ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  pies  and 
sauces  made  of  other  fruits. 

In  the  baking  of  pumpkin  pie,  which,  next  to  that 
made  of  apples,  is  perhaps  the  most  characteristically 
American  pie,  mace  (which  is  derived  from  the  cover- 
ing of  the  nutmeg  seed)  or  some  other  spice,  is  not  only 
permissible  but  commendable;  while  mince  pie,  which 
we  borrowed  from  the  English  but  eat  probably  oftener 
than  they  do,  is  such  a  jumble  of  condiments — sugar, 
raisins,  currants,  almonds,  apples,  lemon  and  orange 
juice  and  peel,  molasses,  suet,  quince  jelly,  and  other 
things  ad  libitum — that  it  makes  little  difference  what 
you  add  in  the  way  of  mace,  cloves,  cinnamon,  ginger, 
or  other  spices  within  reason.  Time  was  when  caraway 
seeds,  saffron,  rosewater,  ambergris,  and  other  impos- 
sible things  were  added.  As  made  now,  mince  pie  is 
as  agreeable  to  most  palates  as  it  is  indigestible.  I  am 
told  it  can  be  made  so  as  to  be  easily  digestible,  but  I 
"hae  ma  doots." 

Some  years  ago  mince  pie  was  dignified  by  being 
made  the  subject  of  a  political  squabble  in  Washing- 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    471 

ton.  Dr.  Wiley  wanted  a  definition  of  "normal 
mincemeat,"  and  thirty  manufacturers  were  summoned 
to  testify.  Evidently  some  of  these  manufacturers 
were  making  mincemeat  without  the  chopped  meat 
which  is  an  essential  ingredient  of  the  best  home-made 
article,  for  they  engaged  a  trained  lexicographer.  Prof. 
C.  D.  Childs,  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  to 
prepare  a  treatise  on  mince  pie,  in  which  it  was  demon- 
strated that  mincemeat  does  not  necessarily  contain 
meat. 

The  definition  in  Murray's  Oxford  Dictionary  is  "a 
mixture  made  of  currants,  raisins,  sugar,  suet,  apples, 
almonds,  candied  peel,  etc.,  and  sometimes  meat 
chopped  small;  used  in  mince  pies";  which  shows  that 
in  England,  also,  meat  is  not  always  an  ingredient.  It 
is  only  fair  to  consumers,  however,  that  the  law  should 
compel  the  manufacturers  to  print  the  ingredients  in 
each  case  on  the  label.  Mince  pie  with  meat  is  cer- 
tainly better  than  mince  pie  without. 

Perhaps  I  erred  in  saying  that  pumpkin  pie  is,  next 
to  apple  pie,  the  most  characteristic  American  pastry 
dish.     It  certainly  is  not  more  so  than  cranberry  pie. 

The  cranberry  is  not  exclusively  American,  like 
maple  syrup,  terrapin,  and  canvasback  duck,  for  it 
grows  in  some  parts  of  Europe;  but  it  remained  for 
American  epicures  to  discover  its  rare  gastronomic 
merits.  It  took  genius  to  do  this,  for  in  its  natural 
wild  state  the  berry  is  excessively  astringent  and  acid. 


472  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

But  it  had  a  Flavor  that  made  an  irresistible  appeal 
and  invited  further  cultivation.  Particularly  agreea- 
able  is  the  Oxycoccus  erythrocarpus^  a  variety  which 
grows  in  the  mountains  of  Virginia  and  Georgia.  The 
European  berries,  though  they  used  to  be  abundant  in 
England,  were  neglected  because  of  their  inferior 
Flavor,  and  England  now  imports  cranberries  in  large 
quantities  from  the  United  States,  as  do  France,  Italy, 
and  Germany,  chiefly  for  tarts. 

Cape  Cod  is  now  the  chief  camping  ground  of  the 
cranberry.  It  has  been  doubled  in  size  by  cultivation, 
and  its  Flavor  improved  by  enriching  and  draining  the 
soil,  and  in  other  ways.  The  annual  production  is 
about  three  million  bushels.  Thanks  to  the  growing 
demand  for  them,  bog  lands  which  were  worth  $5  an 
acre  now  sell  at  $300  to  $700  per  acre. 

The  darker  the  berry  the  richer  the  flavor.  Once 
upon  a  time  I  wrote  a  book  on  Romantic  Love  and  Per- 
sonal Beauty  in  which  I  tried  to  prove  that  brunettes 
are  more  beautiful  than  blondes.  I  am  not  sure  that 
I  succeeded — there  are  certainly  some  ravishing  excep- 
tions!— but  in  the  matter  of  foods  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  as  a  rule  the  dark  are  finer  than  the  light 
colored. 

Does  not  Boston,  the  center  of  American  culture, 
give  its  name  to  brown  bread,  and  does  not  Boston  pre- 
fer dark  eggs  to  the  anemic  white  ones  favored  in  New 
York'?     Does  any  one  who  has  had  the  good  sense  to 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    473 

buy  "rusty"  oranges  and  grapefruit  deny  that  they  are 
sweeter  and  more  fragrant  than  the  light  yellow  ones^ 
Ask  any  epicure  if  he  does  not  think  the  second  joint 
of  a  fowl  is  more  savory  than  the  white  meat.  Bread 
which  has  a  deep  brown  crust  is  more  tasty  than  pale 
crumb.  Crackers  toasted  brown  are  more  appetizing 
than  crackers  untoasted.  English  rusks,  German  zwie- 
back, Italian  breadsticks,  are  they  not  all  brunettes^ 
Do  not  all  vegetables,  fruits,  and  berries  darken  as 
they  ripen  and  develop  their  flavor*? 

The  darkest  cranberries  therefore  are  the  ones  you 
want  to  buy.  And  be  sure  that  your  cook  in  preparing 
cranberry  sauce  or  jelly  presses  the  pulp  through  a 
sieve  to  remove  the  indigestible  skins.  It  is  only  when 
they  are  cooked  whole  and  candied  with  an  equal 
weight  of  sugar  that  the  skins  may  be  left  on  them. 

TURKEYS,   GUINEA    FOWL,   AND   GAME. 

Cranberry  sauce  is  in  America  associated  inseparably 
with  turkey,  and  the  turkey  is  another  of  our  gastro- 
nomic specialties. 

Benjamin  Franklin  argued  that  the  turkey — which 
is  surely  a  finer  bird  than  the  eagle,  less  vicious,  and 
infinitely  more  useful — should  have  been  adopted  as 
the  emblem  of  the  United  States,  for  it  is  a  truly  in- 
digenous and  national  bird.  In  Franklin's  day  "the 
log  cabin  of  the  pioneer  was  surrounded  by  these  birds, 
saluting  each  other  in  the  early  morning  from  the  tree- 
tops." 


474  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

Those  were  gala  times  for  hunters  and  epicures, 
when  wild  turkeys  used  to  fly  in  flocks  of  hundreds  I 

They  owe  their  name  to  the  notion,  once  current, 
that  they  came  to  Europe  from  Asia.  But  it  is  now 
established  beyond  doubt  that  they  are  aboriginal 
Americans.  It  did  not  take  the  Spaniards  long  to 
find  out  their  value,  for,  little  more  than  a  quarter  of 
a  century  after  Columbus  discovered  this  Continent, 
they  took  some  of  the  birds  across  the  sea  to  their  own 
country  and  thence  the  turkey  soon  made  its  way  to 
other  parts  of  Europe.  Records  show  that  in  Eng- 
land, in  1541,  the  turkey  was  enumerated  among  the 
dainties,  while  in  1573  it  had  become  the  customary 
fare  of  the  farmer. 

"The  turkey  is  beyond  doubt  one  of  the  finest  pres- 
ents the  New  World  has  made  the  Old,"  wrote  the 
best-known  of  French  epicures,  Brillat-Savarin;  and  in 
his  "Physiologic  du  Gout"  he  has  a  chapter  in  which  he 
proudly  relates  how  he  shot  one  of  these  birds.  It 
was  in  1794;  he  was  visiting  a  friend  at  Hartford, 
Connecticut,  who  took  him  out  hunting  one  day,  after 
having  treated  him  on  the  previous  evening  to  a  dinner 
one  course  of  which  consisted  of  the  entirely  American 
corned  beef,  which  the  eminent  epicure  found  "splen- 
did." 

They  shot  some  fat  tender  partridges  and  seven  gray 
squirrels,  "which  are  highly  esteemed  in  this  coun- 
try";    then    he    had    his    chance     at    the     turkey, 


BRILLAT-SAVARIN 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     475 

bagged  it,  took  it  back  to  Hartford  and  had  it  cooked 
for  some  guests  who  kept  exclaiming:  "Very  good! 
Exceedingly  good !     Oh,  dear  sir,  what  a  glorious  bit." 

Though  he  had  a  high  opinion  of  his  own  judgment 
in  matters  gastronomic,  Brillat-Savarin  was  much 
pleased  when  a  friend  of  his,  M.  Bose,  who  lived  in  Car- 
olina, contributed  to  the  "Annales  d'Agriculture"  of 
Feb.  28,  1821,  an  article  which  confirmed  his  own  judg- 
ment as  to  the  superiority  of  the  American  turkey  to  the 
bird  as  reared  in  France,  attributing  this  superiority  to 
the  fact  that  the  American  turkey  roamed  the  woods 
freely  and  thus  gained  a  finer  Flavor  than  the  domesti- 
cated bird  has. 

Unfortunately,  it  took  American  poultry  raisers  sev- 
eral generations  to  realize  the  full  significance  of  this 
fact.  All  was  well  so  long  as  there  were  plenty  of  wild 
turkeys,  the  flesh  of  which  was  of  perfect  savor, 
especially  during  the  autumn,  when  they  lived  largely 
on  pecan  nuts.  All  was  well,  too,  so  long  as  the  farms 
were  few  and  scattered,  and  there  was  interbreeding  of 
wild  and  domesticated  birds.  But  the  time  came  when 
the  turkeys  degenerated,  owing  to  excessive  inbreeding 
and  too  close  confinement.  It  is  only  within  a  few 
years  that  farmers  have  begun  to  heed  the  advice  that 
"it  is  better  to  send  a  thousand  miles  for  a  new  male 
than  to  risk  the  chances  of  inbreeding,"  and  to  restore 
to  the  turkey  his  forest  freedom. 

"While  our  present-day  turkeys  are  classed  as  'do- 


476  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

mestic  fowls.'  they  are  rather  semi-domestic  when 
compared  with  other  poultry,"  writes  T.  F.  Mc- 
Grew/ 

It  is  this  semi-game  quality  of  the  best  turkeys  that 
make  them  so  dear  to  the  epicure.  Brillat-Savarin's 
verdict  is  that  the  turkey,  "though  not  the  most  tender, 
is  the  most  tasty  of  all  the  farm  fowls," — and  few  will 
disagree  with  him. 

For  the  benefit  of  the  rapidly  growing  number  of 
farmers  who  increase  their  income  by  raising  turkeys, 
I  will  cite  the  words  of  an  expert  which  sum  up  the 
philosophy  of  the  subject: 

The  flavor  of  all  turkeys  raised  by  careful  farmers  within 
five  or  six  years  is  much  finer  than  in  the  run  down  stock  raised 
by  old  fogy  farmers.  The  improvement  in  flavor  has  also 
been  accompanied  by  an  increase  in  size  and  tenderness.  This 
is  due  to  the  admixture  of  the  strain  from  wild  turkeys  from 
Canada  and  the  South  and  the  Southwest  and  to  the  modem 
system  of  keeping  the  birds  out  of  doors  as  much  as  possible 
and  giving  them  opportunities  for  getting  plenty  of  mast  and 
the  seeds  of  wild  and  cultivated  plants  and  pure  water  from 
brooks  and  streams  kept  clear  from  noxious  plants  and  sewage. 

Birds  thus  reared  bring  fancy  prices — a  point  to 
which  I  shall  recur  in  the  next  chapter  under  "Feeding 
Flavor  Into  Food." 

It  has  been  customary  for  a  long  time  for  patriotic 
persons  to  send  to  the  President  of  the  United  States 

1  "Turkeys :  Their  Standard  Varieties  and  Management."  Farmers* 
Bulletin.   No.  200. 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    477 

choice  turkeys  for  the  Thanksgiving  and  Christmas  din- 
ners. Woodrow  Wilson  received  one  in  December, 
1912,  from  Kentucky  which  weighed  forty- three 
pounds  and  had  been  nurtured  "as  befits  a  King  Gob- 
bler," on  sweet  chestnuts,  with  celery  and  pepper  to 
improve  its  Flavor. 

The  Guinea  fowl  is  another  bird  which  must  roam 
wild  to  do  well,  and  which  consequently  has  a  gamy 
Flavor,  like  the  semi-domestic  turkey.  Though  not  an 
aboriginal  American,  it  has  become  acclimated.  It  is 
an  African  cousin  of  the  turkey. 

In  his  useful  treatise  on  "The  Guinea  Fowl  and  Its 
Use  as  Food"  (Farmers'  Bulletin  No.  234),  Dr.  Lang- 
worthy  states  that  in  Jamaica  and  some  other  regions 
the  Guinea  birds  "have  gone  back  to  their  wild  state 
and  are  hunted  in  their  season  as  game  birds.  They  are 
also  well  known  as  game  birds  in  England,  where  large 
flocks  are  sometimes  kept  in  game  preserves." 

On  the  continent  they  are  more  domesticated  and  are 
raised  in  large  numbers  for  the  markets  of  France, 
Austria,  and  Germany.  What  we  want  in  our  markets, 
however,  is  not  the  domesticated  Guinea  fowl  so  much 
as  the  half-wild.  We  have  plenty  of  other  good  barn- 
yard birds,  including  the  savory  squab,  but  we  are  woe- 
fully short  of  game,  and  the  Guinea  fowl,  more  than 
the  turkey,  comes  to  the  rescue.  While  the  mature  bird 
has  its  own  gamy  Flavor,  the  chicks  resemble  young 
quail,  and  the  eggs  are  a  good  deal  like  the  highly 


478  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

valued  plover  eggs.  Even  the  domesticated  birds  re- 
tain a  surprising  number  of  their  wild  traits  and  on  this 
bird,  therefore,  we  may  have  to  depend  largely  for  our 
game  of  the  future. 

To  the  deplorable  condition  of  our  present  game  mar- 
ket I  referred  briefly  in  the  chapter  on  Germany,  where 
they  do  things  so  much  better.  In  New  York,  quail 
(so  abundant  until  a  few  years  ago)  are  now  imported 
from  far-away  Egypt,  and  grouse  from  Scotland,  while 
prices  have  gone  up  like  rockets. 

In  Louisiana  alone  it  was  computed  that  over 
4,265,000  game  birds  were  killed  in  the  season  1909- 
1910.  Mrs.  Russell  Sage's  generous  gift  of  $150,000 
secured  Marsh  Island  as  a  refuge  for  the  wild  fowl. 
Others  have  helped  the  cause,  and  the  Government's 
efforts  are  thus  summed  up  in  Circular  No.  87  of  the 
Bureau  of  Biological  Survey: 

For  purposes  of  administration  the  bird  reservations  are 
grouped  In  six  districts:  (i)  The  Gulf  district,  Including  10 
reservations  in  Florida,  4  In  Louisiana,  and  i  in  Porto  Rico; 
(2)  the  Lake  district,  including  2  in  Michigan,  2  In  North 
Dakota,  and  i  In  Wisconsin;  (3)  the  Mountain  district,  in- 
cluding 12  in  the  Rocky  Mountain  States,  South  Dakota,  and 
Nebraska;  (4)  the  Pacific  district,  including  3  in  California, 
4  in  Oregon,  and  8  in  Washington;  (5)  the  Alaska  district, 
including  8  reservations;  and  (6)  the  Hawaiian  district,  in- 
cluding I  reservation.  Wardens  are  stationed  on  the  more  im- 
portant reservations  and  the  National  Association  of  Audubon 
Societies  .  .  .  cooperates  actively  with  the  Department  of 
Agriculture  In  protecting  the  birds. 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     479 

There  is  a  special  periodical,  the  "Gamebreeders' 
Magazine,"  devoted  to  the  task  of  replenishing  our  stock 
of  wild  animals,  which  was  for  so  many  generations  one 
of  the  chief  assets  of  Gastronomic  America.  There 
are  also  Breeders'  Associations  which  are  planning  to 
make  American  game,  feathered  and  unfeathered, 
abundant  once  more.  No  one  can  ever  bring  back  the 
large  flocks  of  wild  turkeys,  the  pigeons  that  darkened 
the  skies,  the  herds  of  countless  buffaloes;  but  we 
can  at  least  bring  back  in  part  our  former  abun- 
dance of  some  kinds  of  game  by  following  European 
methods. 

The  Government  is  also  ready  to  help  by  supplying, 
without  charge,  birds  to  be  liberated  and  allowed  to 
multiply  in  various  places.  Our  native  birds  are,  of 
course,  best  adapted  for  this  purpose,  but  what  can  be 
done  with  imported  birds  is  shown  in  Farmers'  Bulletin 
No.  390,  in  which  Henry  Oldys  of  the  Biological  Sur- 
vey tells  the  interesting  story  of  how  the  Chinese  and 
English  pheasants  have  been  made  to  feel  at  home  in 
Oregon  and  in  other  States,  where  they  have  become 
permanent  additions  to  the  game  list. 

"Deer  Farming  in  the  United  States"  is  another  val- 
uable Farmers'  Bulletin  (No.  330),  by  D.  E.  Lantz. 
Its  object  is  thus  summed  up: 

As  a  result  of  the  growing  scarcity  of  game  animals  in  this 
country  the  supply  of  venison  is  wholly  inadequate  to  the  de- 
mand, and  the  time  seems  opportune  for  developing  the  indus- 


48o  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

try  of  deer  farming,  which  may  be  made  profitable  alike  to 
the  State  and  the  individuals  engaged  therein.  The  raising 
of  venison  for  market  is  as  legitimate  a  business  as  the  growing 
of  beef  and  mutton,  and  State  laws,  when  prohibitory,  as 
many  of  them  are,  should  be  so  modified  as  to  encourage  the 
industry.  Furthermore,  deer  and  elk  may  be  raised  to  ad- 
vantage in  forests  and  on  rough,  brushy  ground  unfitted  for 
either  agriculture  or  stock  raising,  thus  utilizing  for  profit 
much  land  that  is  now  waste.  An  added  advantage  is  that 
the  business  is  well  adapted  to  landowners  of  small  means. 

Mr.  Lantz  is  convinced  that,  with  favorable  legisla- 
tion, "this  excellent  and  nutritious  meat,  instead  of  be- 
ing denied  to  99  per  cent,  of  the  population  of  the 
country,  may  become  as  common  and  as  cheap  in  our 
markets  as  mutton." 

LOBSTERS,    SCALLOPS,    CRABS,    AND    FISHES. 

Every  inch  an  American  is  the  Homarus  Americanus. 
There  are  not  so  many  inches  of  him  as  there  used  to  be, 
but  that  makes  him  none  the  less  precious.  The  Pil- 
grim lobsters  "five  or  six  feet  long,"  ascribed  to  New 
York  Bay  in  the  days  of  Olaus  Magnus,  are  now  classed 
as  a  myth,  but  four- foot  lobsters  (measured  from  the  tip 
of  the  claws  to  the  end  of  the  tail)  have  been  caught. 
Such  a  giant  weighs  about  thirty-four  pounds. 

The  American  lobster  was  originally  found  only  on 
the  eastern  coast  of  North  America.  These  lobster 
grounds  some  seven  thousand  miles,  including  the 
curves  of  the  shore,  were  the  finest  the  world  has  ever 


GASTRONOMIC   AMERICA    481 

seen.  In  Canada  alone  a  hundred  million  lobsters 
have  been  captured  in  a  year. 

In  one  respect  the  lobster  differs  strangely  from  other 
creatures  of  sea  and  land.  Like  the  eel,  he  is  a  scav- 
enger of  the  deep,  but  while  the  eel  is  often  offensive  to 
the  taste  because  of  this  feeding  habit,  the  lobster  is 
always  sweet.  "Nothing  could  be  more  offensive  to 
the  human  nostril,"  writes  Dr.  Francis  Hobart  Herrick,* 
than  the  netted  balls  of  slack-salted,  semi-decomposing 
herring,  which  are  commonly  used  as  bait  on  the  coast 
and  islands  of  Maine,  but  by  the  wonderful  chemical 
processes  which  are  continually  going  on  in  the  labora- 
tory of  its  body,  the  lobster  is  able  to  transmute  such 
products  of  organic  decay  into  the  most  delicate  and 
palatable  flesh." 

Were  it  not  for  this  alchemistic  marvel  the  most 
plutocratic  restaurants  in  the  United  States,  especially 
those  which  cater  to  the  persons  who  sup  after  the  thea- 
ter, would  never  have  become  known  as  Lobster  Pal- 
aces. The  lobster  served  in  these  places,  plain  boiled, 
broiled,  a  la  Newburg^  and  in  other  ways,  is  one  of 
those  characteristic  American  foods  which  foreign  epi- 
cures not  only  envy  but  enjoy,  though  they  cannot  have 
our  crustaceans  as  fresh  as  we  do. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  "the  story  of  the  lobster 
in  its  progress  from  the  fisherman's  pots  on  the  Maine 

1  "In  his  beautifully  illustrated  and  valuable  "Natural  History  of  the 
American  Lobster."  From  Bulletin  of  the  Bureau  of  Fisheries,  1909. 


482  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

coast  to  the  grills  and  silver  chafing-dishes  on  Broadway 
is  the  whole  story  in  miniature  of  the  high  cost  of  living 
under  an  artificial  economic  condition."  The  lobster- 
man  gets  a  little  over  ten  cents  a  pound.  "The  whole- 
saler doubles  the  price,  the  retailer  trebles  it,  and  in  the 
end  the  restaurant-keeper  marks  it  up  1,000  per  cent. 
above  the  first  cost,  charging  patrons  $1.50  a  portion 
for  what  the  lobsterman  was  paid  a  tenth  of  that  sum." 

To  this  extortion  I,  for  one,  refuse  to  submit.  In  the 
market  you  can  buy  a  lobster  for  one  quarter  to  one- 
third  the  price  charged  in  most  restaurants.  You  can 
make  sure  he  is  alive — never  buy  a  dead  lobster,  though 
they  say  he  is  safe  to  eat  if  his  tail  is  curled  and  springs 
back  when  pulled.  To  kill  him  by  plunging  him  in 
boiling  water  may  seem  cruel,  but  is  no  more  so  than 
other  ways,  and  is  certainly  infinitely  less  so  than  the 
usual  way — which  should  be  forbidden — of  letting 
him  perish  slowly  in  a  barrel,  or  on  ice. 

Canned  lobster  is  a  food  a  wise  man  avoids,  though, 
to  be  sure,  he  runs  perhaps  no  greater  risk  in  eating 
it  than  in  consuming  many  other  things,  tinned  or  un- 
tinned.  Millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  canned  lobsters, 
crabs,  and  salmon  are  eaten  every  year. 

A  new  American  delicacy  hails  from  Canada:  lobster 
rarebit,  a  compound  of  certain  parts  of  the  lobster  which 
had  previously  been  thrown  away  as  waste  by  the  can- 
ners.  The  annual  output  of  canned  lobster  by  the 
Eastern  Provinces  of  Canada  now  amounts  to  about 


GASTRONOMIC   AMERICA    483 

ten  million  cans,  worth  about  $3,000,000.  Lobster 
rarebit,  which  is  said  to  be  a  highly  appetizing  delicacy, 
easily  digested  and  nourishing  may,  it  is  believed,  in 
time  equal  the  money  value  of  canned  lobsters.  Con- 
sul Frank  Deedmeyer,  of  Charlottetown,  gave  these 
details  at  the  time  when  lobster  rarebit  was  first  intro- 
duced : 

Canned  lobster,  as  known  to  the  trade,  consists  of  the  meat 
taken  from  the  claws  and  the  tail.  The  whole  of  the  body 
proper  is  now  rejected  by  the  packers,  and  it  has  heretofore 
been  used  in  the  maritime  Provinces  of  Canada  as  a  fertilizer. 
In  the  rejected  portion  is  found  a  crescent-shaped  meaty  layer 
to  which  the  tail  is  attached  and  the  liver.  Lobster  rarebit  is 
a  compound  of  this  meaty  layer,  of  the  liver,  and  of  the  roe, 
to  w^hich  some  spice  is  added.  The  first  named  of  the  com- 
ponents used  is  the  fattest  part  of  the  crustacean;  the  liver, 
glandular,  is  large  and  retains  a  high  percentage  of  bile.  The 
number  of  eggs  found  in  a  lobster  is  estimated  from  5,000  to 
40,000,  according  to  size.  The  three  ingredients  are  mixed 
in  these  proportions:  Six-tenths  meat,  three-tenths  liver,  and 
one-tenth  roe. 

While  the  efforts  to  propagate  the  Atlantic  lobster 
have  met  with  scant  success  on  the  Pacific  Coast  there  ^ 
are  other  marine  delicacies  to  console  those  who  dwell 
on  the  shore  from  Southern  California  to  Washington 
and  British  Columbia ;  among  them  the  abalone  of  Cat- 
alina,  which  makes  delicious  soup,  the  razor  clam  and 
monster  specimens  of  other  clams  in  Washington 
waters,  oysters,  huge  crabs,  and  above  all,  crawfish. 

In  Oregon,  the  crawfish  abounds  in  creeks  and  rivers, 


ALL    POTATOES    SERVED 
WILL    BE  CHARGED    FOR 


MONDAY. 


JANUARY    6, 
SOUPS 


1913 


Mock  turtle ... 30 

Chicken.  Creole .  .25 

Scotch  broth —...25 

Cream  of  asparagus ..25 


Consomme,  duchesse ..25 

Paysanne 25 

Tomaio 25 

Mutton 25 


Consomme,  hot  or  <iold 25 

'*         cup , IS 

Oyster .  25 

Clam  chowder ..2* 


FISH    READY 
Boiled  live  codfish,  oyster  sauce .. .. 


.40 


Lynnhavens  ...^... 
Blue  Points 
Buzzards  Bays 
Cotuits 


OYSTERS 

30     Pried  In  batter. 50 

Pan  roast         40 

Roast  in  shell 40 

Escaloped  in  shell -40 


Box  stew 

Astor  House  oyster  Rip  .40 

Au  gratin 50 

Pickled 30 


40 


Ontheshell 25     Stewed 36     Steamed 40 


Oyster  cocktail 30     Fried  ,.».... 40     Broiled. 


.40 


Uttle-Neck  cUms  stewed.. 30 

"        'steamed 35 

"  clam  cocktail.. 30 


CLAMS 

Uttle-Neck  clams  roasted  .40 

"         fried i  40 

"•         on  shell    25 

SHELL    FISH 


Clam  broth 25 

Clam  fritters  ..^ 40 

Soft  shell  clams,  steamed.  .35 


Plain  lobster qo     Deviled  lobster K      Broiled  lobster i  00 

Lobster  croquettes 75     Lobster .k  la  Newburg  _.i  00      Baked  lobster,  stuffed  ....  75 

CHICKEN  PATTY  ....40        OYSTER  PATTY 35 

FRIED  SCALLOPS    ...50        WITH  BACON 60 

PEEP  SEA  SCALLOPS  WITH   BACON .50 

ENTREES 

Beef  a  la  mode,  toutgeofse :,_ 40 

Fricassee  of  veal  with  mushrooms » 50 

Whole  spring  chicken  en  casserole,  asparagus  tips ...1  50 

Irish  stew  with  vegetables . .40 

Loin  of  fresh  porfc,  apple  sauce . SO 

Lobster  patties,  Maryland . ..60 

Calf's  head,  vinaigrette . ..  .. ...60 

Apple  fritters,  rum  sauce. ............ .................30 


ROAST 


Beef - 50 

Leg  of  mutton 40 

Roast  beef  sandwich,  hot 45 

Lamb,  mint  sauce .. 75 

Suckling  pig,  apple  sauce  ...  ...50 


Filet  of  beet 70 

Ham,  Champagne  sauce  .., 50 

Turkey,  cranberry  sauce 65 

Philadelphia  chicken,  half . 75 

Pork,  apple  sauce. ..............50 


BOILED 
Corned  beef  and  cabbage -.._.... 40     Mutton,  caper  sauce. ....^. ......... .....40 


VEGETABLES    AND    RELISHES 


Pried  sweet  potatoes 20 

Potatoes,  boiled 10 

"       baked 10 

••        mashed 10 

••        julienne 20 

"        French  fried 15 

Onions,  boiled 15 

Spinach 20 

Macaroni,  plain 15 

"        au  gratin 25 

"        napolitaine 20 

"        a  la  Moutgelas..3o 
Olives 20 


New  string  beans 30 

Stewed  tomatoes 15 

Beets 15 

Fried  egg-plant 30 

Cold  slaw..., 20 

Radishes 10 

Celery 25 

French  peas,  naturel 30 

French  string  beans 30 

Succotash   20 

Mashed  turnips .10 

Cabbage 15 

CauUflower.30    au  gratio.40 


French  artichokes .....50 

Canned  asparagus 30 

'*        Lima  beans ..25 

"       sweet  corn .20 

"       green  peas     25 

"       string  beans ..25 

Fonds  d'artichauts  farcis  ..75 

Pin-money  pickles ..10 

Pickled  onions 20 

Pickled  English  walnuts..  25 

Chow  chow ...ID 

Stuffed  mangoes. 15 

ChiH  sauce 10 

Chutney  sauce .15 


Cigars  Served  In   Sealed   envelopes  with  Price  Marked  Tliereon 


Small  steak 

Sirloin  steak  ._. i   »o 

Extra  slrioio  steak 2  00 

Small  tenderloin  steak 60 

Porterhouse  steak i  50 

Squab  guinea-hen . .1  75 

half 90 


TO    ORDER 

.__.6o     English  mutton  chop., ^. .......  50 

Mutton  chops 4* 

Sweetbreads —  75 

Philadelphia  chicken  broiled,  half  ..75 

Squab  .. 75 

Jumbo  squab 90 

Stuffed  squab i  00 


COLD 


Rotst  beef 50 

Ham 40 

Pork ^__.. AO 

Corned  beef 40 

Tongue .... ... . 40 

Lamb 75 

Roast  turkey ... 60 

Half  roast  chicken  ...............t. 75 

Veal 40 

Leg  of  mutton 40 

Baked  pork  and  beans 35 

SALADS 


Pate  de  fole-gras i  o© 

Lamb's  tongue > 40 

Sardines     .    40 

Crackers  and  milk ..20 

Crackers  and  half  and  half .....  30 

Crackers  and  cream 40 

Rice  and  milk,  bowl ,.w 25 

Rice  and  cream,  bowl 40 

Graham  wafers  and  milk 25 

••  "      half  and  half 35 


Lobster ..75     Chicken.. ..60 

Celery. 40 

Potato 25    Chicory 40 

Watercress 30     Shrimp 50 

Spanish  or  Bermuda  onion 30 

PUDDINGS 


Lettuce. ,.,„., ...25     Romalne 25 

Cucumber  ., 25 

Tomato... ...... 25 

Escarole   40 

Mixed  (2)  kinds  ....  40     (3) 50 

AND    PIES 


English  plum  pudding,  hard  and  brandy  sauce 25 

Apple  tapioca  pudding,  claret  sauce 15      Boston  cream  puffs .lO 

Steamed  plum  dumpling,  rum  sauce 15      Mince  pie ._ 20 

Peach  pie . 15     Cold  corn  starch  pudding 15 

Pumpkin  pie ... .. . ^..15      Hot  or  cold  riee  pudding 15 

Apple  pie 15-     Snow  pudding........ 15 


SWEET 

Rice  cake 10 

Wine  cake.. _ 10 

"        with  icecream 25 

Cream  cake 10 

Charlotte  russe 15 

Cream  meringue . 15 

Macaroon  glace 30 

Meringue  glacee * 25 

Meringue  panachee ...30 

Ice  cream,  strawberry ^ . 20 

"         coffee^ 20 

•*         vanilla ,.20 

*•  chocolate 20 

"         French 25 

"  Neapolitan .._..-25 

Biscuit  Tortoni 30 

Nesselrode ., 30 


DISHES 

Lemon  water  Ice 20 

Roman  punch 25 

Siberian  punch 25 

Blanc  mange... , 15 

Honey  in  comb 20 

Currant  jelly 20 

Farina  jelly  with  cream. 20 

Champagne  jelly ...25- 

Soft  vanilla  custard 15 

Soft  vanilla  custard  frozen 25 

Cup  custard. 15 

Brandy  peaches 50 

Bar-le-Duc  jelly ....40 

Banana  jelly    ..,„,  ^, ._ ... ,_..20 

Brandy  jelly  ........ .... .....20 

Oranj3;e  jelly  .... ^ ..—  ......20 

Tarts *..•.... 10 


Cream 

Camembert , 


Grapefruit 40    half  ..25 

Malaga  grapes 25 

Concord  grapes , 25 

Baked  apples  &.cream.each  15 


CHEESE 

Roquefort ...25 

Impe^rial ^ 15 

Neufchatel 15 

FRUIT 

Oranges,  eacn 10 

Apples,  each 10 

Bananas,  each 10 

A.pplesauce. 15 


English IS 

Brie 20 


Pear 10 

Stewed  prunes 15 

Stewed  rhubarb ......15 

Preserved  figs ..--30 

with  cream ..40 


TEA,    COFFEE    ETC 


Cup  of  coffee  , 10 

with  cream  ...... .... ....  15 

Pot  of  coffee ......... . . ...  25 

Demi-tasse  coffee  .. . ._....._-..-._  10 

Pot  of  chocolate  ........................25 

Pot  of  cocoa . .....................25 

Cap  of  tea ^ ...10 


Pot  of  green  tea 20 

Pot  of  Oolong  tea 20 

Pot  of  Japan  tea .20 

Pot  of  English  breakfast  tea 20 

Pots  of  tea  with  cream 25 

Glass  of  milk lO 

Glass  of  cream 20 

Buttermilk lo 


Lunch  Bill  of  Fare  of  a  Popular  New  York  Restaurant 


486  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

varying  in  size  with  the  volume  of  the  river.  One  of 
my  favorite  amusements  as  a  boy  used  to  be  to  sit  on  the 
bank  of  a  creek  taking  care  of  several  lines,  to  the  ends 
of  which  were  tied  pieces  of  meat.  No  net  was  needed ; 
the  crustaceans  were  so  abundant  and  so  hungry  that 
they  refused  to  let  go  when  lifted  out  of  the  water,  and 
often  I  landed  six  or  more  fastened  to  the  same  piece 
of  meat.  Our  favorite  picnics  were  those  for  which  we 
took  along  no  food — only  a  kettle  and  a  handful  of 
salt.  The  crawfish  did  the  rest.  They  are  more  ten- 
der and  succulent  than  lobsters,  and  even  more  delicate 
in  flavor. 

St.  Louis  disputes  with  Portland  the  honor  of  being 
the  greatest  crawfish-eating  center  in  the  United  States. 
The  Mississippi  River  crawfish  has  made  St.  Louis 
famous  among  epicures.  Until  a  few  years  ago,  the 
"Republic"  of  that  city  informs  us,  "the  waters  around 
St.  Louis  on  every  side  fairly  swarmed  with  this  fresh- 
water relation  of  the  lobster.  Every  pond,  slough,  and 
back  water  was  full  of  them.  All  the  creeks  and  pools 
were  their  homes.  Their  little  mud  'chimneys'  dotted 
the  creek  bottoms  and  lined  the  banks  of  the  ponds  and 
sloughs.  Hundreds  of  joyous  St.  Louisans  struck  out 
for  the  open  on  every  holiday,  armed  with  a  pole,  a 
few  pieces  of  liver,  and  a  dip  net,  bent  on  their  capture. 
They  caught  so  many  that  they  brought  them  in  by  the 
sackful.  Thousands  of  the  little  crustaceans  were 
eaten  every  day  of  the  season.     From  April  until  after 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    487 

the  snowfalls  of  November  every  real  St.  Louisan  ate 
a  few  crawfish  every  week." 

In  1910  this  abundance  had  diminished  to  such  an 
extent  that  a  mandate  was  issued  by  the  State  Fish  and 
Game  officials  which  put  a  stop  to  angling  in  the  city's 
waters.  The  crawfish  multiplies  so  rapidly,  however, 
that  it  will  doubtless  soon  replenish  the  waters,  and  once 
more  there  will  be  parts  of  St.  Louis  and  other  cities 
where  the  evening  air  will  be  "laden  with  the  unmis- 
takable odor  of  boiling  crawfish." 

Of  the  great  variety  of  crabs  peculiar  to  our  waters 
the  one  which  most  appeals  to  epicures  is  the  "soft 
shell,"  which,  when  very  soft,  is  eaten  skin,  bones,  and 
all.  But  wait — there  is  another  kind,  still  more  del- 
icate and  toothsome — the  oyster  crab.  It  dwells  within 
the  mantle  chamber  and  feeds  on  the  juices  of  the  oyster. 
No  wonder  it  tastes  good.  Fortunately,  it  is  not  one 
of  the  many  enemies  of  the  bivalve,  being  quite  harm- 
less. Its  scarcity,  combined  with  its  diminutive  size, 
makes  it  a  luxury  comparable  to  the  old  Roman  mil- 
lionaire's dish  of  nightingale  tongues. 

A  foreigner  looking  at  an  American  bill  of  fare  is 
struck  first  of  all  by  the  number  of  ways  in  which 
oysters  are  listed :  raw,  stewed,  fried,  steamed,  baked  in 
the  shell,  scalloped,  creamed,  and  so  on;  and  by  the 
fact  that  the  locality  from  which  the  oysters  that  are 
served  raw  are  supposed  to  come  is  named — Blue  Point, 
Shrewsbury,    Rockaway,   Buzzard's   Bay,    Cape   Cod, 


y 


488  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

Norfolk,  Saddle  Rock,  etc.  In  this  matter  there  is,  to 
be  sure,  much  deception.  It  has  become  customary,  in 
particular,  to  give  the  name  of  Blue  Point  to  any  small 
oyster,  and  to  call  any  kind  of  large  size  a  Saddle  Rock; 
while  many  a  worthless  floated  oyster  masquerades  un- 
der the  name  of  the  juicy  and  delicious  Lynnhaven. 

The  oyster  cracker,  and  the  soda  cracker  in  general,  is 
an  American  specialty  which  Europeans  will  doubtless 
adopt  some  day  as  tasty,  nutritious  and  easily  digested 
additions  to  the  dietary.  As  sold  now,  in  dust  and 
moisture-proof  packages,  they  will  easily  find  their  way 
to  foreign  stomachs. 

Clam  chowder,  steamed  soft  clams,  and  raw  Little- 
necks  are  among  the  delicacies  an  American  misses  in 
Europe. 

As  for  our  scallop,  Paderewski  thinks  it  is  the  best 
edible  thing  America  produces.  Many  other  epicures 
doubtless  agree  with  him. 

As  seen  in  our  markets  the  scallop  is  simply  the  ab- 
ductor muscle  of  the  bivalve.  The  remainder  of  the 
body  is  thrown  away  or  used  as  fertilizer,  though  much 
of  it  is  tender  and  of  fine  Flavor.  Nor  is  this  waste- 
fuless  the  only  cause  for  complaint.  The  best  scallops 
are  small ;  they  are  expensive,  and  the  dealers,  knowing 
that  by  soaking  them  they  can  bloat  a  pint  of  them  till 
they  fill  a  quart,  subject  them  to  this  "freshening," 
which  as  thoroughly  takes  all  the  marine  Flavor  out  of 
them  as  "floating"  takes  it  out  of  the  oyster.     In  this 


GASTRONOMIC   AMERICA    489 

condition,  too,  they  spoil  sooner  and  become  dangerous 
to  eat.  I  agree  with  F.  Powers  that  "a  man  who  soaks 
scallops  and  then  offers  them  for  sale  should  be  im- 
prisoned." 

The  scallop  dredgers  were  among  the  first  to  take 
advantage  of  the  new  parcel  post,  which  enables  them  to 
send  the  unspoiled  mollusc  to  any  one  within  a  reason- 
able distance. 

Concerning  our  fishes  it  is  easy  to  say  that  the  finest- 
flavored  are  the  shad,  the  whitefish,  the  Chinook 
salmon,  the  rainbow  trout ;  but  when  you  happen  to  be 
eating  a  baby  blueiish  or  a  Spanish  mackerel  just  out  ^ 
of  the  water,  you  may  change  your  mind  for  the  time 
being;  you  are  sure  to  do  this,  also,  if  you  happen  to  be 
in  New  Orleans  and  eat  fresh  pompano  as  prepared  by  a 
Creole  cook.  The  sheepshead,  the  smelt,  the  catfish, 
the  sturgeon,  the  halibut,  are  excellent;  and  so  is  the 
swordfish,  which  is  far  too  little  known  among  gour- 
mets. Its  flesh  might  be  more  tender,  but  it  has  a  fine 
Flavor,  suggesting  a  combination  of  salmon  and  hal- 
ibut. 

It  is  for  the  cod,  however,  that  I  wish  to  plead  most 
earnestly.  Some  persons  (usually  persistent  smokers, 
or  individuals  whose  sense  of  smell  is  not  well  de- 
veloped) maintain  that  the  cod  is  "tasteless."  As  a 
matter  of  fact  it  has  a  subtle  but  most  delicious  Flavor 
which,  when  the  fish  is  fresh,  reminds  me  of  the  flesh  of 
crawfish. 


490  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

At  present  (1913)  the  cod  enjoys  the  advantage  of 
being  the  only  fish,  with  the  exception  of  trout,  that 
can  be  bought  alive  in  the  markets  of  New  York. 
"Live  cod,"  when  listed  on  restaurant  menus,  is  in  great 
demand.  It  is  not  always  equally  good,  however,  be- 
cause much  of  the  "live  cod"  is  really  live  hake,  which 
is  far  inferior  in  Flavor.  The  substitution  of  haddock 
for  cod  is  less  objectionable.  Much  of  the  salted  and 
dried  fish  which  goes  into  the  typically  American  cod- 
fish balls,  is  also  cod  in  name  only.  Dealers  who  use 
benzoate  of  soda  or  other  chemicals  to  preserve  it,  give 
elaborate  directions  for  soaking  them  out.  It  is  need- 
less to  say  that  this  soaking  process  also  takes  out  all 
the  Flavor. 

y  VEGETABLES    STEADILY    GAINING    GROUND. 

Historians  are  usually  so  deeply  interested  in  all  the 
petty  details  of  politics  that  such  trifles  as  the  food 
which  keeps  us  alive  gets  no  attention  at  all. 
Macaulay  was  a  laudable  exception.  Another  is  Mac- 
master.  In  the  first  volume  of  his  "History  of  the 
People  of  the  United  States"  he  remarks  that  a  century 
ago  tomatoes,  cauliflower,  and  eggplants  were  not  to  be 
found  at  the  corner  grocery;  oranges  and  bananas  were 
a  luxury  of  the  rich;  and  there  were  no  cultivated 
varieties  of  strawberries  or  raspberries.  Of  apples  and 
pears  there  were  plenty,  but  "none  of  those  exquisite 
varieties,   the   result  of  long  and   assiduous   nursing, 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    491 

grafting,  and  transplanting,  which  are  now  to  be  had 
of  every  greengrocer." 

In  Boston,  at  that  time,  "beef  and  pork,  salt  fish, 
dried  apples  and  vegetables,  made  up  the  daily  fare 
from  one  year's  end  to  another."  "The  wretched  fox 
grape  was  the  only  kind  that  found  its  way  to  the 
market,  and  was  the  luxury  of  the  rich."  "Among  the 
fruits  and  vegetables  of  which  no  one  had  then  even 
heard  are  cantaloupes,  many  varieties  of  peaches  and 
pears,  tomatoes  and  rhubarb,  sweet  corn,  the  cauli- 
flower, the  eggplant,  head  lettuce  and  okra." 

To-day,  how  different  the  situation!  In  the  cata- 
logues of  the  seedsmen  more  than  fifty  kinds  of  veg-  / 
e tables  are  listed,  and  of  each  kind  a  dozen,  or  several 
dozen,  distinct  varieties  are  offered  for  sale.  Yet  these 
varieties  represent  only  a  very  small  proportion  of  the 
vast  number  that  have  been  created. 

In  his  instructive  book  on  Plant  Breeding,  L.  H. 
Bailey  has  a  chapter  on  one  of  the  fnost  deserving  of 
Americ!an  originators  of  new  varieties  of  vegetables, 
N.  B.  Keeney,  of  Leroy,  New  York.  Mr.  Keeney  was 
at  one  time  raising  sixty-five  varieties  of  garden  peas 
and  sixty-nine  of  beans,  thirteen  of  the  latter  of  his  own 
originating,  including  the  stringless  kinds  which  have 
been  introduced  throughout  the  country  by  Mr.  Burpee, 
and  which  are  one  of  America's  greatest  achievements 
in  plant  development.  The  Professor  was  told  by  Mr. 
Keeney  that  fully  three  thousand  varieties  and  forms 


492  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

of  beans  had  been   discarded  by  him  as  profitless! 

In  the  same  volume  Professor  Bailey  informs  us  that 
the  date  of  the  first  fruit  book  is  1817.  "In  1845, 
nearly  two  hundred  varieties  of  apples  were  described 
as  having  been  fruited  in  this  country,  of  which  over 
half  were  of  American  origin."  In  1872  the  number 
of  varieties  described  was  1823,  and  in  1892  Ameri- 
can nurserymen  offered  for  sale  878  varieties  of 
apples. 

Among  the  vegetables  which  have  been  varied  and 
improved  by  American  breeders  are  the  squashes,  pump- 
kins, sweet  potatoes,  rhubarb,  celery,  corn,  lettuce, 
tomatoes,  watermelons,  cantaloupes,  cucumbers,  po- 
tatoes, and  eggplants. 

One  vegetable,  Brussels  sprouts,  has  not  been  im- 
proved but  greatly  impaired  by  some  man  (whether  an 
American  or  a  European  I  do  not  know)  who  crossed 
it  with  cabbage,  making  the  sprouts  larger  but  less  finely 
flavored  and  alsa  less  digestible. 

As  I  wrote  of  tomatoes,  which  are  of  American 
origin,  in  the  chapters  on  France  and  Italy  I  have  only 
a  few  words  to  add. 

It  is  an  odd  fact  that  although  we  can  claim  this  suc- 
culent vegetable  as  one  of  the  New  World  blessings,  it 
was  in  the  Old  World,  in  the  Mediterranean  countries 
that  its  gastronomic  value  was  first  fully  realized.  In 
the  United  States,  as  in  England  and  Germany,  there 
seems  to  have  been  a  prejudice  against  it  because  of  its 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     493 

belonging  to  the  same  family  as  the  deadly  nightshade. 

Much  ingenuity  has  been  expended  in  creating  new 
varieties  and  prolonging  the  season.  It  is  a  most  un- 
fortunate circumstance  that  some  of  our  most  important 
vegetables  are  killed  by  the  slightest  frost.  This  is  true 
of  squashes,  pumpkins,  potatoes,  beans,  cucumbers, 
melons,  and  tomatoes.  Knowing  that  Luther  Burbank 
had  succeeded  in  making  apple-blossoms  frost-proof,  I 
once  asked  him  to  please  do  the  same  for  tomatoes.  He 
shook  his  head  and  replied  that  that  was  beyond  his 
powers,  because  of  their  semi-tropic  origin  and  hab- 
its. 

Yellow  tomatoes  are  not  so  much  used  (except  for 
preserves)  as  they  deserve  to  be.  They  have  a  very 
fine  Flavor  of  their  own.  In  regard  to  red  varieties,  it 
may  be  well  to  warn  the  breeders  not  to  go  too  far  in  * 
their  efforts  to  create  "beefsteak"  varieties  by  reducing 
the  seed  pulp  to  a  minimum.  It  is  in  that  pulp  that  the 
richest  Flavor  is  found,  and  the  seeds  do  not  appear  to 
be  indigestible. 

Like  the  tomatoes,  celery  belongs  to  a  family  of 
poisonous  plants  and  was  also  for  a  long  time  consid- 
ered poisonous,  which  is  doubtless  the  reason  why  it  is 
only  within  comparatively  recent  years  that  it  has  come 
so  much  into  demand.  To-day  it  is  raised  all  the  way 
from  Florida  to  Michigan,  where  it  flourishes,  particu- 
larly in  the  muck-bed  area. 

Celery  is  not  indigenous  to  our  soil.     It  has  been 


494  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

used  in  Europe  for  centuries,  but  in  the  kitchen  rather 
than  as  an  ornament  of  the  dining-room.  In  Italy, 
France,  Germany,  it  is  treated  as  a  pot-herb,  for  flavor- 
ing stews  and  soups,  the  unbleached  plant  being  pre- 
ferred because  of  its  more  powerful  Flavor;  but  all 
celery  tops  and  leaves  are  useful  for  this  purpose;  they 
certainly  do  much  to  give  zest  to  soups  and  stews. 

So  far  as  known  England  was  the  first  country  to 
appreciate  the  charm  of  blanched  celery.  In  a  book 
called  "The  New  World  of  Words,"  published  by  a 
nephew  of  Milton  in  1678,  we  read  that  "Sellerie  is  an 
herb  which,  nursed  up  in  a  hot-bed  and  afterwards 
transplanted  into  rich  ground,  is  usually  whited  for  an 
excellent  winter  sallad." 

We  also  use  it  to  some  extent  as  a  salad,  but  it  needs 
no  vinegar  for  pungency,  and  most  of  us  prefer  to  eat 
the  stalks  plain,  cum  grano  salts.  Few  who  eat  it 
this  way  know  that  it  is  much  more  digestible  if  the 
stalk  is  broken  in  pieces  and  the  fiber  stripped  off. 
Stewing  softens  the  fibers.  Cooked  au  jus^  celery  is 
almost  better  even  than  raw.  If  I  had  the  choice  of  a 
dozen  vegetables  at  dinner,  I  would  more  often  than 
any  other  choose  celery  au  jus. 
J  Raw  celery  is  seen  so  much  more  frequently  on  the 
table  in  this  country  than  in  any  other  that  it  may  be 
virtually  considered  an  American  specialty.  Nowhere 
else  is  it  so  crisp  and  tender,  or  so  eagerly  craved.  It  is 
a  nerve  tonic,  and  we  need  nerve  tonics. 


GASTRONOMIC   AMERICA    49^ 

While  melons  are  not  indigenous  to  America,  many 
of  the  choicest  varieties  of  cantaloupes  and  watermelons 
are  creations  of  our  growers.  Nowhere  in  the  world 
will  you  find  anything  to  surpass  in  sweetness  and  fra- 
grance the  Emerald  Gem,  the  New  Spicy,  or  the  Rocky 
Ford,  most  luscious  of  all. 

The  New  World's  most  important  contribution  to 
other  countries,  so  far  as  nutritive  value  is  concerned,  is 
the  potato.  How  Ireland  and  Germany,  in  particular, 
could  have  ever  got  on  without  this  vegetable,  it  is 
difficult  to  imagine. 

Sweet  potatoes  also  are  of  American  origin.  They 
have  been  slow  in  making  headway  in  Europe  because 
they  do  not,  like  the  white  potato,  grow  in  almost  any 
soil  and  climate.  Farmers'  Bulletin  No.  324  is  devoted 
to  sweet  potatoes.  Its  author,  W.  R.  Beattie,  of  the 
Bureau  of  Plant  Industry,  remarks  that  "as  a  com- 
mercial truck  crop  the  sweet  potato  would  be  included 
among  the  five  of  greatest  importance,  ranking  perhaps 
about  third  in  the  list.  As  a  food  for  the  great  mass  of 
the  people  living  in  the  warmer  portions  of  our  country 
the  use  of  this  crop  is  exceeded  by  hominy  and  rice 
only."  In  the  Philippine  Islands  it  is  at  certain  sea- 
sons almost  the  only  food  available  for  the  lower 
classes.  There  are  many  varieties,  the  soft,  moist 
kinds  being  richer  in  Flavor  than  the  others.  These 
are  preferred  in  the  South  where  a  mealy  sweet  potato 
would  not  be  eaten. 


496  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

THE    FRUIT    eaters'    PARADISE. 

Many  a  time,  in  contemplating  the  conditions  de- 
scribed under  the  heading  of  "Ungastronomic  America," 
have  I  wished  I  lived  in  Europe;  yet,  every  time,  my 
gastronomic  allegiance  to  the  Stars  and  Stripes  is 
cemented  again  by  the  contemplation  of  the  glorious 
fruits  we  produce.  This  feeling  is  the  stronger  because 
I  had  the  rare  good  fortune  to  grow  up  in  an  Oregon 
apple  orchard.  Oregon  apples  gave  me  my  college 
education,  and  my  sturdy  health,  too,  for  nothing  is 
more  wholesome  than  apples,  and  from  my  eighth  to 
my  eighteenth  year  I  ate  more  apples  than  anything 
else.  In  our  orchard  of  many  hundreds  of  trees  there 
were  scores  of  varieties,  some  of  which  I  would  no  more 
have  thought  of  eating  than  a  raw  potato.  Not  that 
they  would  not  have  found  a  ready  sale  in  any  market; 
but  at  home  they  were  rejected  because  of  their  inferior- 
ity in  Flavor  to  the  Gravenstein,  the  Red  Astrachan,  the 
Baldwins,  the  Northern  Spy,  Yellow  Newtown  and 
Green  Newtown  Pippins,  Winesap,  Roxbury  Russet, 
White  Winter  Pearmain,  Swaar,  Seek-No-Further, 
and  the  Rambo,  juiciest  of  cider  apples  and  good  to  eat 
out  of  hand. 

We  also  used  to  peel  and  cut  up  apples  for  drying. 
Very  few  people  know  the  most  delicious  way  to  eat 
apples.  We  knew  it.  Turn  the  wheel  of  the  peeler 
round  two  or  three  times;  that  removes  the  skin;  then 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     497 

keep  on  turning  till  all  the  pulp  has  peeled  off  into  your 
left  hand.  Raise  your  head,  drop  into  your  mouth  the 
pulp  of  the  apple  and  you  will  know  the  meaning  of 
the  word  Flavor.  And  the  best  of  it  is  that  if  eaten 
that  way,  raw  apples  are  not  indigestible  for  anybody. 
Thirty-two  years  after  these  glorious  feasts  had  come 
to  an  end  I  was  pleased  to  get  for  review  E.  P.  Powell's 
delightful  book,  "The  Country  Home,"  ^  and  to  find 
that  that  eminent  connoisseur's  ideas  regarding  the  best 
American  apples  coincided  in  the  main  with  my  youth- 
ful convictions.  I  cannot  too  strongly  urge  my  readers 
to  get  that  volume  and  enjoy  Mr.  Powell's  remarks — 
written  con  am  ore  as  well  as  with  the  knowledge  of  an 
expert — on  the  kinds  of  apples,  pears,  peaches,  plums, 
cherries,  and  other  fruits  which  it  is  most  advisable  to 
raise  on  American  farms,  and  what  is  the  best  way  to  do 
it.  Strawberries,  gooseberries,  currants  and  blackber- 
ries have  a  chapter  to  themselves,  for  of  all  these  there 
are  distinct  American  varieties — and  under  the  heading, 
"Tons  of  Grapes,"  the  author  gives  pages  of  appetizing 
information  about  the  fruit  which,  next  to  apples,  is  a 
prime  article  of  diet.  He  shows  how  you  can  manage 
to  have  grapes  six  or  seven  months  every  year,  and  tells 
what  are  the  best  varieties  to  grow.  Every  farmer  and 
owner  of  a  country  home  should  raise  grapes.  "It  is 
cheaper  and  better  food  than  meat  and  vegetables,  and 
they  never  tire  of  it.     I  recommend  that  you  go  out 

iNew  York:  McClure,  Phillips  &  Co.,  1904. 


498  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

before  breakfast  and  sample  a  half-dozen  sorts;  repeat 
the  experiment  before  dinner,  and  if  the  digestion  is 
poor,  take  nothing  else  for  supper." 

Grapes  are  nothing  if  not  American — that  is,  some 
grapes  are.  They  are  indigenous  to  the  soil,  growing 
wild  nearly  everywhere,  from  the  extreme  south  to  the 
banks  of  the  Androscoggin  in  Maine,  where  I  have 
often  picked  them. 

A  curious  and  important  difference  between  grapes 
in  America  and  in  Europe  is  noted  by  Professor  Bailey 
in  his  "Sketch  of  the  Evolution  of  Our  Native  Fruits." 
The  American  grape — that  is,  the  ameliorated  offspring 
of  the  native  species,  "is  much  unlike  the  European 
fruit.  It  is  essentially  a  table  fruit,  whereas  the  other 
is  a  wine  fruit.  European  writings  treat  of  the  vine, 
but  American  writings  speak  of  grapes."  Yet  it  was 
not  till  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  "the 
modern  table  use  of  the  native  grape  began  to  be  appre- 
ciated and  understood." 

That  grapes  were  not  brought  from  Europe  to 
America  is  absolutely  certain.  Long  before  Columbus, 
there  came  across  the  sea  Leif,  who,  in  the  words  of 
Justin  Winsor,  "found  vines  hung  with  their  fruit, 
which  induced  Leif  to  call  the  country  Vineland."  In 
New  England,  Edward  Winslow  wrote  in  1621  that 
"here  are  grapes,  white  and  red,  and  very  sweet  and 
strong  also." 

Professor  Bailey's  book  is  largely  devoted  to  the  men 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA    499 

who  improved  American  fruits — men  who,  as  he  justly 
intimates,  deserve  commemoration  quite  as  much  as 
persons  who  are  distinguished  in  military  operations. 
But  while  we,  as  a  nation,  have  reason  to  feel  proud  of 
the  achievements  of  these  men,  a  great  deal  more  re- 
mains to  be  done.  Professor  Bailey  does  not  say  which 
of  our  Eastern  grapes  he  considers  the  best,  but  I  am 
sure  he  would  agree  with  me  that  the  Delaware  has  a 
finer  Flavor  than  any  other  kind,  and  of  the  four  chief 
American  grapes  the  Delaware  is  the  only  one  "which 
gives  any  very  strong  evidence  of  foreign  blood."  This 
point  has  been  disputed;  but  it  is  certainly  true  that 
"the  types  we  grow  are  yet  much  inferior  to  the  Old 
World  types."  Our  Concords,  Niagaras,  and  Ca- 
tawbas,  in  particular,  are  capable  of  great  improvement 
in  the  matter  of  Flavor.  Fortunes  are  in  store  for 
growers  who  will  take  the  hint. 

It  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  there  are  varieties,  such 
as  the  lona,  Eldorado,  Brighton,  Worden,  Hayes,  and 
Lindley,  which,  though  not  to  be  found  in  our  wretched 
markets,  are  delicious.  They  are  enjoyed  by  owners  of 
country  residences  and  their  guests,  even  though  city 
folk  are  unaware  of  their  existence. 

Altogether,  the  American  grapes  have  given  rise  to 
some  eight  hundred  domestic  varieties,  about  one  hun- 
dred of  which  may  be  found  listed  in  catalogues. 

Flavors  cannot  be  transplanted.  European  grapes 
grown  in  America  get  a  different  "taste,"  and  the  wines 


500  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

made  of  them  have  not  the  same  bouquet.  A  few 
exceptions  there  are,  notably  the  muscatel  grape,  which 
is  almost  as  delicious  in  California  as  it  is  in  Spain. 
But  as  a  rule  it  is  a  waste  of  money  to  attempt  to  dupli- 
cate European  fruits.  Many  millions  have  been  spent 
in  vain  efforts  to  do  this.  To  succeed,  we  must  be 
American. 

Long  ago  we  learned  to  enjoy  our  game  and  our  many 
varieties  of  distinctive  sea  foods  of  unique  Flavor. 
Our  native  vegetables,  wild  nuts,  fruits,  and  berries,  we 
also  appreciated,  but  these  still  offer  limitless  oppor- 
tunities for  improvement  of  their  qualities — a  proceed- 
ing which  pays  better  than  importing  things  European. 
Our  nuts,  among  them  the  hickory,  pine,  and  black  wal- 
nut, are  delightfully  racy  of  the  soil.  They,  too,  are 
as  American  as  the  Indians,  and  wherever  possible  their 
intermarriage  with  our  domesticated  fruits  and  berries 
is  a  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished. 

Our  wild  crab-apples,  for  instance,  of  which  there 
are  five  types,  while  excessively  sour,  have  a  superabun- 
dance of  flavor.  By  transfusing  their  blood  into  the 
domesticated  apples  we  can  eliminate  the  excess  of  acid 
and  give  to  many  of  our  big  apples  a  richer  aroma. 

The  persimmon  is  one  of  our  native  fruits  of  unlim- 
ited possibilities.  Heretofore,  our  markets  have  been 
supplied  chiefly  with  the  Japanese  kaki,  raised  in  Cali- 
fornia or  Florida.  It  is  a  delicious  fruit,  but  there  are 
native  varieties  which  in  the  opinion  of  some  are  even 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     501 

finer  than  the  Japanese.  Ordinarily  the  wild  American 
persimmon  is  as  sour  and  astringent  as  a  crabapple,  fit 
only  for  the  'coon  and  the  'possum.  But  there  have 
been  enthusiasts  whose  belief  in  the  future  of  our  per- 
simmon amounted  to  a  passion.  One  of  these  was 
Bryant,  "whose  zeal  as  a  cultivator  and  whose  interest 
in  fruit-growing  were  almost  as  great  as  his  poetic 
enthusiasm."  To  Professor  Bailey  he  expressed  his 
belief  that  the  finest  persimmons  of  the  future  would 
be  grown  in  the  alluvial  meadows  of  southern  In- 
diana. 

While  the  persimmon  is  as  delicious  as  the  banana, 
the  demand  for  it  has  not  been  so  great  as  it  will  be 
when  the  public  learns  that  this  fruit  has  the  finest 
Flavor  and  is  most  wholesome  when  it  looks  like  an 
overripe  tomato  which  no  one  would  buy.  An  Italian 
pushcart  man  used  to  smile  when  he  saw  me  approach- 
ing. He  knew  I  would  pick  out  those  which  were  so 
soft  that  they  could  be  taken  home  only  in  a  paper  box. 
"Ah,  you  know,  you  know !"  he  used  to  say,  pleased  that 
his  best  things  were  not  left  on  his  hands  by  the  unin- 
formed multitude. 

As  a  boy  I  used  to  enjoy  hugely  the  May  apple — a 
plum-shaped  fruit  growing  on  a  low  plant.  What  was 
my  indignation  when,  some  years  later,  I  began  to  study 
botany  and  found  in  Professor  Asa  Gray's  text  book  a 
description  of  that  fruit,  ending  with  the  words: 
"Eaten  by  pigs  and  boys."     I  promptly  made  up  my 


502  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

mind  that  if  adults  do  not  relish  this  luscious  fruit  they 
have  something  to  learn  from  pigs  and  boys. 

Another  Southern  fruit,  abundant  in  Missouri,  which 
greatly  pleased  my  boyish  palate,  was  the  pawpaw. 
Professor  Bailey  says  that  most  people  do  not  relish  its 
flavor,  nor  does  he  believe  that  it  will  be  possible  to 
awaken  much  interest  in  this  fruit.  Mr.  Powell,  on  the 
other  hand,  pays  it  a  high  tribute.  He  sees  "no  reason 
why  this  delicious  fruit,  a  sort  of  hardy  banana,  should 
not  be  grown  everywhere  in  our  gardens." 

Those  are  the  words  of  an  epicure.  I  am  sure  the 
pawpaw  has  a  great  future.  To  many  it  may  be  an 
acquired  taste,  but  so  are  olives,  and  the  most  appetiz- 
ing of  all  table  delicacies,  Russian  caviare.  I  thank 
my  stars  that  I  always  took  naturally  to  such  things;  it 
has  added  much  to  the  pleasures  of  life.  So  far  as 
pawpaws  are  concerned,  it  will  be  easier  to  persuade 
skeptics  to  try  to  learn  to  like  them  if  they  are  told  that 
their  juice  is  considered  by  medical  men  a  great  aid  to 
digestion.  Papain  is  much  used  as  a  substitute  for 
soda  mints. 

GOVERNMENTAL    GASTRONOMY. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  in  no  other  country  has  the  Gov- 
ernment done  so  much  as  ours  has  to  advise  and  aid 
those  who  raise  foods  and  those  who  prepare  them  for 
the  table.  In  the  preceding  pages  reference  has  been 
made  to  dozens  of  Farmers'  Bulletins  and  other  publi- 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     503 

cations  containing  the  results  of  experiments,  made  at 
the  cost  of  many  millions  of  dollars,  with  a  view  to  in- 
forming the  public  on  those  matters.  Every  State  and 
Territory  now  has  its  own  Agricultural  Experiment  Sta- 
tions. Primarily,  the  aims  of  these  stations  are  of 
course  agricultural  and  economic;  in  the  last  analysis, 
however,  what  are  all  the  Bulletins  issued  by  them  but 
so  many  lessons  in  national  gastronomy? 

A  few  years  ago  the  Department  of  Agriculture 
boldly  invaded  the  kitchen  itself,  providing  excellent 
lessons  in  the  arts  of  preparing  and  preserving  good 
food,  in  such  bulletins  as  "The  Care  of  Milk  and  Its 
Use  in  the  Home,"  "Bread  and  Bread-making,"  "Food 
Customs  and  Diet  in  American  Homes,"  "Care  of  Food 
in  the  Home,"  "Economical  Use  of  Meat  in  the 
Home,"  "Preparation  of  Vegetables  for  the  Table," 
"Composition  and  Digestibility  of  Potatoes  and  Eggs," 
"Cereal  Breakfast  Foods,"  "Food  Value  of  Cottage 
Cheese,  Rice,  Peas,  and  Bacon,"  "Cheese  and  Its  Eco- 
nomic Uses  in  the  Diet,"  "Varieties  of  Cheese,"  "Fish 
as  Food,"  "Sugar  as  Food,"  "Beans,  Peas,  and  Other 
Legumes  as  Food,"  "Poultry  as  Food,"  "Use  of  Fruit 
as  Food,"  "Nuts  and  Their  Uses  as  Food,"  "Canning 
Vegetables  in  the  Home,"  etc. 

For  farmers,  truck  gardeners,  and  those  who  market 
foods,  there  is  a  still  longer  list  of  Bulletins,  Circulars, 
Experiment  Station  Reports,  and  other  Government 
publications.     To    mention    only    a    few    of    them: 


504  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

"Potato  Culture,"  "Sheep-feeding,"  "The  Sugar 
Beet,"  "Asparagus  Culture,"  "Marketing  Farm  Pro- 
duce," "Care  of  Milk  on  the  Farm,"  "Ducks  and 
Geese,"  "Rice  Culture,"  "The  Apple  and  How  to  Grow 
It,"  "Grape  Growing  in  the  South,"  "Home  Fruit 
Garden,"  "Home  Vineyard,"  "Cheese-making  on  the 
Farm,"  "Cranberry  Culture,"  "Squab  Raising,"  "Meat 
on  the  Farm:  Butchering,  Curing,  Etc.,"  "Importation 
of  Game  Birds  and  Eggs  for  Propagation,"  "Strawber- 
ries," "Turkeys,"  "Canned  Fruits,  Preserves,  and  Jel- 
lies," "Cream  Separators  on  Western  Farms,"  "Rasp- 
berries," "Tomatoes,"  "The  Guinea  Fowl,"  "Cucum- 
bers," "Maple  Sugar  and  Syrup,"  "Home  Vegetable 
Garden,"  "Celery,"  "Poultry  Management,"  "Sweet 
Potatoes,"  "Onion  Culture,"  "A  Successful  Poultry  and 
Dairy  Farm,"  "Bees,"  "A  Successful  Hog  and  Seed- 
Corn  Farm,"  "Manufacture  of  Butter  for  Storage," 
"Butter-making  on  the  Farm,"  "Facts  Concerning  the 
History,  Commerce  and  Manufacture  of  Butter," 
"The  Cultivation  of  Mushrooms,"  and  many  more. 

These  valuable  monographs  were  prepared  by  ex- 
perts, mostly  specialists,  women  as  well  as  men.  Dis- 
tributed free  when  first  published,  they  are  afterwards 
sold  at  cost  price,  usually  a  nickel  apiece;  few  of  them 
cost  more  than  a  dime.  Full  lists,  with  prices  and  gen- 
eral instructions  can  be  obtained  by  sending  a  postal 
card  to  the  Superintendent  of  Documents  at  Washing- 
ton.    There  are  separate  price  lists  of  documents  re- 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     505 

lating  to  agriculture,  dairying,  food  and  diet,  irrigation, 
soils,  wild  animals,  fishes,  health  and  hygiene,  poultry 
and  birds,  etc. 

In  addition  to  all  these  documents  there  are  many 
papers  in  the  Daily  Consular  and  Trade  Reports  con- 
taining valuable  information  on  foreign  foods  and 
methods  of  marketing,  gathered  by  the  Consuls  at  the 
Government's  request. 

The  supplying  of  information  on  everything  relating 
to  foods  is  only  one  phase  of  the  Government's  gastro- 
nomic activity.  Another  consists  in  calling  attention 
to  neglected  edible  plants.  On  this  subject  one  of  the 
experts  of  the  Bureau  of  Plant  Industry  says: 

What  we  call  weeds  are  no  more  so  than  other  plants  that 
we  term  vegetables.  Weeds  are  vegetables,  and  our  so-called 
vegetables  were  once  upon  a  time  no  more  than  weeds.  The 
classification  results  from  a  matter  of  habit.  We  are  slaves 
of  habit,  and  because  we  are  so  it  has  not  occurred  to  us  that 
we  could  eat  anything  but  just  the  old  list  of  vegetables  our 
ancestors  have  eaten  for  generations.  But  now  we  are  having 
our  eyes  opened  and  are  beginning  to  peer  into  fence  corners 
and  back  yards  and  wild  pastures  for  new  and  w^onderful  food- 
stuffs that  we  have  heretofore  regarded  as  just  weeds.  It  Is  a 
bit  mortifying  that  because  of  this  preconceived  Idea  we  have 
let  most  nutritious  and  valuable  foodstuffs  go  to  waste  under 
our  very  eyes,  while  perhaps  we  were  wailing  that  we  had 
little  to  eat  and  that  vegetables  were  too  expensive  and  so  on. 

Among  the  plants  thus  neglected,  but  which,  if  prop- 
erly improved  and  marketed,  would  enrich  truck 
farmers,  are  yellow  dock,  dandelions,  milkweed,  golden 


5o6  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

thistles,  mallows,  purslane  (recommended  by  Thoreau), 
poke  shoot,  red  clover,  sorrel,  hop  shoots,  yarrow,  leek, 
and  lupines. 

A  third  gastronomic  function  of  our  Government  is 
the  importing  of  foreign  fruits  and  vegetables  that 
promise  to  add  agreeable  variety  to  the  American  diet- 
ary. For  this  purpose  experts  are  sent  to  all  parts  of 
the  world  to  find  and  bring  home  new  plants  which  are 
then  acclimated  in  accordance  with  the  latest  scientific 
methods. 

David  Fairchild,  one  of  these  gastronomic  explorers, 
has  repeatedly  given  in  the  ^'National  Geographic 
Magazine"  fascinating  glimpses  of  the  activity  of  the 
Bureau  of  Plant  Industry  in  this  direction.  What  he 
says  about  the  date  is  particularly  suggestive. 

Search  through  the  deserts  of  the  world  has  revealed 
the  fact  that  the  dates  of  our  markets  are  only  one  or 
two  kinds  of  the  vast  number  of  varieties  known  to  the 
Arabs  and  others  whose  principal  food  is  the  date. 
"Those  we  prize  as  delicacies  are  by  no  means  looked 
upon  by  the  desert  dwellers  as  their  best."  The  search 
has  brought  to  light,  among  other  desirable  kinds,  "the 
hard,  dry  date,  which  Americans  do  not  know  at  all, 
and  which  they  will  learn  to  appreciate  as  a  food,  just 
as  the  Arab  has." 

In  1906  no  fewer  than  a  hundred  and  seventy  vari- 
eties of  dates  had  been  introduced,  and  many  of  these 
are  now  growing  successfully  in  Arizona.     The  time 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     507 

will  come  when  we  can  have  the  choice  of  as  many 
different  kinds  of  dates  in  our  markets  as  we  have  now 
of  apples  and  pears.  And  this  experiment  with  dates 
is,  as  Mr.  Fairchild  says,  something  that  "private  en- 
terprise would  not  have  undertaken  for  decades  to 
come." 

Experiments  by  the  Bureau  of  Plant  Industry  are 
being  carried  on  also  in  Porto  Rico,  the  Philippines, 
Hawaii,  and  the  Panama  Canal  Zone.  It  makes  one's 
mouth  water  to  read  what  Mr.  Fairchild  writes,  for 
instance,  of  the  mangosteen.  There  are  at  least  fifteen 
edible  species.  "It  has  a  beautiful  white  fruit  pulp, 
more  delicate  than  that  of  a  plum,  and  a  flavor  that  is 
indescribably  delicate  and  luscious,  while  its  purple- 
brown  rind  will  distinguish  it  from  all  other  fruits  and 
make  it  bring  fancy  prices  wherever  it  is  offered  for 
sale." 

The  mango  has  for  many  years  tried  to  secure  a  place 
in  our  markets,  but  the  specimens  supplied — usually 
from  worthless  seedling  trees — ^have  given  it  a  bad 
name. 

The  Government  office  of  Pomology  has  been 
cultivating  the  infinitely  superior  Mulgoba  mangoes  of 
East  India,  "fit  to  set  before  a  king,"  and  will  probably, 
ere  long,  add  this  to  the  list  of  marketable  delicacies. 
In  India  there  are  mangoes  of  all  sizes  and  flavors, 
some  of  which  Americans  of  the  future  will  no  doubt 
enjoy. 


5o8  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

The  United  States  Government  has,  furthermore, 
gone  into  the  business  of  creating  entirely  new  fruits, 
and  valuable  varieties  of  nuts,  particularly  pecans,  on 
which  the  Department  of  Agriculture  has  specialized. 
Great  improvements  in  corn,  wheat,  and  other  cereals 
have  also  been  made  at  the  Government's  Experiment 
Stations,  not  to  speak  of  stock  breeding,  some  of  which 
has  a  gastronomic  value.  Nearly  every  volume  of  the 
"Year  Book"  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  has  a 
chapter  or  two  on  this  subject,  and  some  of  the  papers 
have  been  reprinted  separately. 

Probably  the  two  most  important  of  the  new  crea- 
tions are  the  tangelo  and  the  citrange — new  names  for 
new  fruits  which  seem  destined  to  become  as  common 
in  our  markets  as  oranges,  lemons,  limes  and  grapefruit. 

The  tangelo  is  a  hybrid  of  the  tangerine  orange  and 
the  pomelo  (grapefruit).  There  are  several  varieties. 
It  is  described  as  being  sweeter  than  the  pomelo,  but 
more  sprightly  acid  than  the  tangerine.  It  has  the 
loose  "kid-glove"  skin  of  the  latter  fruit.  "The  char- 
acteristic bitter  flavor  of  the  pomelo  is  considerably 
reduced  but  remains  as  a  pleasant  suggestion  of  that 
popular  fruit."  I  have  had  no  opportunity  to  try 
this  novelty,  but  Professor  Bailey  pronounces  it  "an 
excellent  dessert  fruit  and  an  interesting  and  valuable 
acquisition." 

Of  the  citrange,  also,  there  are  several  varieties,  the 
Rusk,  Willits,  and  Morton.     They  are  the  outcome  of 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     509 

an  attempt  to  combine  the  hardiness  of  the  worthless 
trifoliata  orange  {citrus  trijoliata)  with  the  sweetness 
of  the  common  orange.  The  Morton  is  very  near  to  a 
sweet  orange;  while  the  Willits  makes  a  good  drink  and 
replaces  the  lemon  for  culinary  purposes.  The  Rusk 
"makes  a  very  delightful  citrangeade,  a  good  pie,  and 
excellent  marmalade  and  preserves.  For  the  latter 
uses  it  may  ultimately  be  grown  extensively." 

burbank's  new  fruits  and  vegetables. 

As  a  creator  of  new  plants  useful  to  mankind  as  su- 
perior foods,  or  because  of  their  beauty,  no  man  is  the 
peer  of  Luther  Burbank,  of  Santa  Rosa,  California.  In 
the  words  of  David  Starr  Jordan,  president  of  the 
Leland  Stanford  University,  "Luther  Burbank  is  the 
greatest  originator  of  new  and  valuable  forms  of  plant 
life  of  this  or  any  other  age."  "He  is  all  that  he  has 
ever  been  said  to  be,  and  more,"  says  Professor  Bailey 
of  Cornell  University,  America's  chief  authority  on 
horticulture;  and  the  leading  foreign  botanist,  Hugo 
de  Vries,  of  Amsterdam,  admits  that  "in  all  Europe 
there  is  no  one  who  can  even  compare  with  Luther 
Burbank.     He  is  a  unique,  great  genius." 

That  last  sentence  explains  Mr.  Burbank's  suprem- 
acy. He  has,  it  must  be  admitted,  enjoyed  unique  ad- 
vantages. The  climate  of  California  has  been  in  his 
favor,  enabling  him  in  some  cases  to  raise  more  than 
one  crop  in  a  year  and  to  operate  on  a  larger  scale  than 


510  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR  ; 

any  one  else  has  ever  done.  Of  fruits  alone,  for  in-  i 
stance,  he  has  had  under  test  at  one  time  "300,000  ' 
distinct  varieties  of  plums,  different  in  foliage,  in  form  I 
of  fruit,  in  shipping,  keeping,  and  canning  qualities,  ! 
60,000  peaches  and  nectarines,  five  to  six  thousand 
almonds,  2,000  cherries,  2,000  pears,  1,000  grapes,  \ 
3,000  apples,  1,200  quinces,  5,000  walnuts,  5,000  : 
chestnuts,  five  to  six  thousand  berries  of  various  kinds,  '■ 
with  many  thousands  of  other  fruits,  flowers,  and  \ 
vegetables." 

Such  advantages,  however,  would  not  have  enabled  j 
Mr.  Burbank  to  make  his  marvelous  improvements  ! 
along  all  the  lines  hinted  at  in  the  quotation  just  made,    i 

The  world  owes  these  choice  gifts  to  the  fact  that  he 
is  a  genius,  an  artist,  an  epicure,  and  an  enthusiast,  as 
well  as  a  plant  breeder. 

"The  most  obvious  truth  which  strikes  one  when  he    i 
attempts  to  make  a  reflective  or  historical  study  of  the    j 
improvement  of  our  native  fruits,  is  the  fact  that  in 
nearly  every  case  the  amelioration  has  come  from  the    ; 
force  of  circumstances  and  not  from  the  choice  or  design    ; 
of  men.     .     .     .     What  has  been  called  plant  breed- 
ing is  mostly  discovery;  or,  in  other  words,  so  far  as  the    i 
cultivator  is  concerned,  it  is  accident,"  writes  Professor    1 
Bailey,  in  his  "Sketch  of  the  Evolution  of  Our  Native     1 
Fruits."     In  another  of  his  books,  "Plant  Breeding," 
after  stating  that  in  1892  American  nurserymen  were    \ 
offering  878  varieties  of  apples,  he  adds  that  "it  is    I 


LUTHER  BURBANK 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     511 

doubtful  if  one  in  the  whole  lot  was  the  result  of  any 
attempt  on  the  part  of  the  originator  to  produce  a  va- 
riety with  definite  qualities." 

These  remarks  apply  to  the  methods  of  plant  breed- 
ers in  general.  But  there  are  exceptions,  and  Luther 
Burbank  is  the  most  important  of  them  by  far.  True, 
he  also  had  to  rely  on  accident,  such  as  the  discovery  of 
a  California  poppy  with  a  small  crimson  spot,  which  he 
gradually  enlarged  till  the  whole  flower  was  crimson; 
and  it  is  for  the  purpose  of  taking  advantage  of  lucky 
"accidents"  that  he  raises  plants  in  such  unprecedented 
numbers.  But  chance  is  only  one  of  his  assets.  He 
has  in  his  mind  a  mental  pattern,  which  "is  made  just 
as  real  and  definite  as  the  pattern  of  an  inventor,  or 
the  model  of  a  sculptor,"  as  his  biographer  remarks. 

In  other  words,  his  imagination  conjures  a  fruit  im- 
proved along  a  definite  line  in  Flavor,  color,  size,  or 
keeping  quality,  and  he  then  proceeds  to  hybridize  till 
he  has  achieved  the  ideal  he  has  in  his  mind,  though  it 
may  take  a  decade  or  longer  to  do  it. 

In  one  of  Mr.  Burbank's  bulletins  there  is  a  picture 
of  John  Burroughs  sampling  the  "Patagonia"  straw- 
berry in  its  originator's  garden  at  Santa  Rosa.  In  this 
berry  Mr.  Burroughs  discovered  "a  wonderful  pine- 
apple flavor"  and  pronounced  it  the  most  delicious 
strawberry  he  had  ever  tasted.  It  is  claimed  for  it 
that  it  is  an  exceptionally  good  keeper,  and  that  it  can 
be  freely  eaten  by  those  with  whom  the  common  acid 


512  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

strawberries  disagree.  It  is  the  result  of  a  full  quarter 
of  a  century's  patient  experiments.  For  twenty  years 
Mr.  Burbank  had,  as  he  frankly  admits,  tried  in  vain 
to  improve  on  the  finest  berries  in  the  market.  Know- 
ing that  all  our  best  strawberries  have  descended  wholly 
or  in  part  from  one  of  the  Chilian  varieties,  he  got  one 
of  his  collectors  in  Chili,  some  years  ago,  to  send  him 
seeds  of  wild  strawberries  from  the  Cordillera  and  from 
the  Coast  regions.  Among  the  plants  which  grew  from 
these  seeds  he  found  some  that  promised  to  be  of 
great  value  when  crossed  with  the  best  American  and 
European  strains.  With  his  usual  Edisonian  patience, 
he  experimented  until  "among  the  very  numerous  seed- 
lings under  test  was  found  this  unique  berry,  which  was 
at  once  recognized  as  the  grand  prize." 

In  this  little  genealogical  tale  we  have  an  excellent 
illustration  of  that  "judgment  as  to  what  will  likely 
be  good  and  what  bad"  which,  in  the  words  of  Profes- 
sor Bailey,  is  "the  very  core  of  plant-breeding,"  and  in 
which  "Burbank  excels."  The  Burbank  bulletins  give 
many  similar  instances ;  and  in  view  of  the  fact  that  his 
rivals  and  others  have  belittled  his  labors,  it  is  proper 
that  he  should  plead  his  own  cause.  His  bulletins  call 
attention  to  some  of  the  results  of  his  methods  as  com- 
pared with  those  of  other  plant-breeders.  Here,  for 
instance,  is  a  fact  for  his  detractors:  "Nearly  95  per 
cent,  of  the  new  plums  introduced  since  1890,  now 
catalogued  as  standards,  originated  on  my  own  farms, 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     513 

although  nearly  four  times  as  many  new  varieties  have 
been  introduced  by  other  dealers.  Most  of  the  intro- 
ductions of  others  are  not  now  generally  even  listed." 

The  Burbank  plum,  which  was  introduced  less  than 
twenty  years  ago,  is  now  perhaps  more  widely  known 
than  any  other  plum,  the  world  over;  but,  he  says, 
"hundreds  of  better  plums  have  since  been  produced  on 
my  experiment  farms." 

The  Burbank  potato  is  now  the  universal  standard 
in  the  Pacific  Coast  States  and  is  gradually  taking  the 
lead  in  the  Middle  West.  It  originated  at  Mr.  Bur- 
bank's  home  place  in  Massachusetts  in  1873,  and  was 
subsequently  much  improved  by  him  in  California. 
As  H.  S.  Harwood  remarks  in  his  admirable  book  on 
the  career  and  the  achievements  of  Mr.  Burbank,  "New 
Creations  in  Plant  Life"  (the  Macmillan  Co.),  "he  has 
had  four  main  objects  in  view  in  the  work:  A  potato 
with  a  better  flavor,  one  with  a  relatively  larger  amount 
of  sugar,  one  that  will  be  a  larger  size  and  all  of  the 
same  uniform  shape  and  size,  and  one  that  will  better 
resist  diseases  and  be  a  larger  yielder  than  any  potato 
now  known."  In  all  these  points  he  has  succeeded; 
never,  anywhere,  have  I  eaten  potatoes  so  mealy,  so 
digestible,  and,  above  all,  so  rich  in  Flavor  as  Bur- 
bank's.  When  first  introduced  in  California,  in  1876, 
"old  potato  growers  would  have  none  of  it,  because  it 
was  new  and  because  it  was  white.  You  will  have  to 
hunt  a  long  time  to  find  red  potatoes  now^''  writes  Mr. 


514  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

Burbank.  J.  M.  Eddy,  Secretary  of  the  Stockton 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  stated  in  1910  that  in  San 
Joaquin  County  4,750,000  bushels,  or  95  per  cent,  of 
the  entire  output,  were  Burbank  potatoes;  and  accord- 
ing to  the  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture  the  Bur- 
bank potato  is  adding  more  than  $17,000,000  to  the 
farm  incomes  of  America  alone. 

"Corn  is  America's  biggest  crop.  To  add  only  one 
kernel  to  the  ear  of  corn  means  a  five  million  bushel 
crop  increase. 

"In  the  best  corn  States,  corn  grows  from  eight  to 
ten  feet  high,  and  bears  an  average  of  slightly  less  than 
two  ears  to  the  stalk. 

"During  the  past  summer  Luther  Burbank,  on  his 
Santa  Rosa  experiment  farm,  has  grown  corn  sixteen 
feet  in  height,  bearing  thirty-two  ears  to  the  stalk." 

These  statements  are  cited  from  the  prospectus  of 
the  Luther  Burbank  Society  issued  in  the  year  1912, 
relating  to  the  twelve  superbly  illustrated  volumes  to 
be  published  in  which  the  Burbank  discoveries  or  in- 
ventions (nearly  1,300  in  all)  are  described  with  full 
directions  as  to  how  his  methods  can  be  applied  on 
every  farm,  in  every  fruit  orchard,  in  every  truck  or 
home  garden,  to  the  delight  and  profit  of  thousands. 

One  of  Mr.  Burbank's  absolutely  new  creations  is 
the  pomato.  It  is  the  evolution  of  the  potato  seedball, 
heretofore  absolutely  useless,  except  for  experimenters. 
"It  first  appears,"  says  Mr.  Harwood,  "as  a  tiny  green 


"GASTRONOMIC   AMERICA     515 

ball  upon  the  potato  top,  and  develops  as  the  season 
progresses  into  a  fruit  the  size  and  general  shape  of  a 
small  tomato.  .  .  .  It  is  delightful  to  the  taste, 
having  the  suggestion  of  quite  a  number  of  different 
fruits  and  yet  not  easily  identified  with  any  particular 
one.  .  .  .  It  is  fine  eaten  raw  out  of  the  hand, 
delicious  when  cooked,  and  excellent  as  a  preserve." 

Some  years  ago  Mr.  Burbank  wrote  in  regard  to  his 
new  plants  that  every  one  "has  proved  better  than 
those  known  before  in  some  new  quality,  in  some  soils 
and  climates.  All  do  not  thrive  everywhere.  Please 
name  one  good  fruit  or  nut  that  does." 

The  last  two  sentences  are  directed  at  those  of  his 
critics  who  triumphantly  point  to  cases  of  failure  of 
his  new  products  in  this  or  that  locality.  Judgment 
has  to  be  used;  "certain  varieties  which  are  a  success 
in  one  locality  may  be,  and  often  are,  a  complete  fail- 
ure a  few  miles  distant,  or  near-by  on  a  different  soil 
or  at  a  different  elevation." 

The  Burbank  Crimson  Winter  Rhubarb  has  been 
offered  by  unprincipled  dealers  in  the  cold  Northern 
States,  though  they  must  have  known  that  it  could  not 
prove  successful  there.  For  this  new  type  the  claim  is 
made  that  it  is  the  most  valuable  vegetable  introduced 
during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century.  So  many  fortunes 
have  been  made  with  it  in  California  and  Florida  that 
it  has  been  named  "The  Mortgage  Lifter."  The  chief 
forester  of  the  Government  of  South  Africa  reports  that 


5i6  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

at  Cape  Town,  where  all  other  rhubarbs  had  been  a 
failure  for  two  centuries,  the  Burbank  Crimson  Winter 
variety  proved  to  be  a  complete  success.  Yet  Mr.  Bur- 
bank  now  has  a  still  further  improved  variety,  the 
Giant,  which  excels  the  original  Crimson  Winter  Rhu- 
barb "at  least  400  per  cent." 

The  list  of  delicacies  for  which  American — and 
foreign — epicures  are  indebted  to  this  inventor  in- 
cludes many  other  vegetables,  berries,  fruits,  and  nuts. 
He  has  not  only  improved  the  Flavor  of  the  black- 
berry, but  taken  away  its  thorns.  He  has  created  a 
genuine  new  species  by  uniting  the  blood  of  the  black- 
berry with  that  of  the  raspberry.  The  phenomenal 
berry  now  in  such  great  demand  on  the  Pacific  Coast, 
was  evolved  from  the  dewberry.  Burbank's  Himala- 
yan yields  four  times  as  much  by  weight  as  any  other 
berry,  and  keeps  twice  as  long;  hence  it  has  become 
"the  most  profitable  shipping  berry." 

Everybody  likes  quince  jelly  and  marmalade,  but  it 
remained  for  Mr.  Burbank  to  create  the  pineapple 
quince,  which  can  be  eaten  out  of  hand  like  an  apple. 
For  his  improved  cherry  fabulous  sums  have  been  paid 
in  Eastern  markets — over  three  dollars  a  pound  in  one 
case. 

"Cauliflower  is  only  cabbage  with  a  college  educa- 
tion," said  Mark  Twain's  Pudd'nhead  Wilson. 
What  Luther  Burbank  is  doing  besides  creating  entirely 
new  fruits  and  vegetables,  is  to  give  the  older  ones  a 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     517 

college  education.  He  has  grown,  to  cite  his  own 
words,  "several  millions  of  new  fruits  ...  in  the 
constant  effort  to  eliminate  faults  and  substantiate 
virtues." 

Burbank's  Formosa  plum  blends  at  least  fifteen  dif- 
ferent varieties  in  its  origin.  It  is  "unequaled  in  qual- 
ity," free  from  all  disease,  and  keeps  remarkably  well. 
Another  of  his  new  plums  is  practically  without  a  pit, 
while  a  third  has  the  flavor  of  a  Bartlett  pear.  Into 
another  he  has  bred  "a  delicious  fragrance,  so  powerful 
that  when  left  in  a  closed  room  over  night  the  whole 
apartment  will  be  delightfully  saturated  with  the 
odor."  The  new  Nixie  plum  has,  when  cooked,  the 
flavor  and  appearance  of  cranberries.  It  is  described 
as  "the  forerunner  of  a  wholly  new  class  of  fruits," 
and  as  having  an  "almost  incomparably  delicious" 
flavor,  which  it  owes  to  the  blood  of  the  wild  Sierra 
plum. 

Some  of  Mr.  Burbank's  prunes  excel  the  best  of  the 
French ;  and  his  plumcot  is  another  of  the  entirely  new 
fruits  he  has  given  the  world.  In  creating  this,  he  bred 
together  a  wild  American  plum,  a  Japanese  plum,  and 
an  apricot,  making  a  fruit  which  differs  in  flavor,  color 
and  texture  from  any  other  kind.  There  are  already 
several  varieties  of  it. 

Of  his  successful  experiments  in  "educating"  nuts 
three  may  be  mentioned.  He  has  made  chestnut  trees 
bear  at  the  unheard-of  early  age  of  a  year  and  a  half; 


5i8  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

he  has  created  a  "paper  shell"  walnut;  and,  what  is 
more  remarkable  still,  he  has  removed  from  the  walnut 
the  disagreeably  bitter  inside  skin  which  makes  it  indi- 
gestible because  of  the  tannin  in  it. 

Grapes  have  not  been  neglected.  In  the  summer  of 
191 1  I  asked  him  if  he  would  not  undertake  to  educate 
some  other  grapes  grown  in  California  to  the  level  of 
the  Muscatels  and  at  the  same  time  give  the  Muscatel 
a  thicker  skin  to  make  it  better  able  to  stand  transporta- 
tion to  the  East.  He  answered  in  a  letter  dated  July 
25,  that  he  was  "at  work  on  several  of  the  California 
grapes  to  give  them  better  flavors,  thicker  skins,  and 
better  keeping  qualities;  and,"  he  added,  "I  assure  you 
that  I  am  having  good  success.  They  are  not  yet  ready 
to  send  out." 

The  Newtown  Pippin  is  one  of  the  finest  apples,  but 
he  has  a  descendant  of  it  which  is  a  far  better  bearer 
and  has  "an  added  aromatic  fragrance."  There  are 
improved  peaches,  too;  also,  many  beautiful  flowers 
new  to  the  world ;  but  of  flowers  this  is  not  the  place  to 
write. 

Is  it  not  strange  that  this  unselfish  wonder-worker, 
whose  object  is  not  to  make  money  (except  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enabling  him  to  go  on  with  his  experiments), 
should  have  met  with  so  much  hostility?  Yet  he 
declares  that  the  greatest  inconvenience  or  injustice  he 
has  met  is  not  misunderstanding,  prejudice,  envy, 
jealousy,  or  ingratitude,  but  the  fact  that  purchasers 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     519 

are  so  often  deceived  by  unscrupulous  dealers  who,  mis- 
using his  name,  foist  upon  the  public  hardy  bananas, 
blue  roses,  seedless  watermelons,  and  a  thousand  other 
things,  including  United  States  Government  thorny 
cactus  for  the  Burbank  Thornless. 

On  this  point  Mr.  Burbank  has  reason  to  write  with 
a  feeling  of  mingled  pride  and  resentment.  In  1896 
the  first  scientific  experiments  for  the  improvement  of 
cactus  as  food  for  man  and  beast  were  made  on  his 
farms.  Eight  years  later,  when  these  costly  experi- 
ments were  crowned  with  success,  the  Department  of 
Agriculture  spent  $10,000  in  searching  for  a  thornless 
cactus  like  those  already  produced  by  Mr.  Burbank. 
The  result  was  a  failure;  the  "spineless"  cactus  sent  out 
were  not  spineless,  not  safe  to  handle  or  feed  to  stock, 
while  the  fruit  was  "seedy  and  poor." 

The  Burbank  improved  cactus,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
free  not  only  from  the  long  spines  but  from  the  even 
more  harmful  microscopic  spicules.  It  is  therefore  "as 
safe  to  handle  and  as  safe  to  feed  as  beets,  potatoes, 
carrots  or  pumpkins."  The  new  thornless  varieties 
will  produce  a  hundred  tons  of  good  feed  where  the 
average  wild  ones  will  yield  only  ten  tons  of  inferior 
fodder.  It  can  be  grown  on  millions  of  acres  of  deserts 
where  no  other  edible  vegetation  can  be  raised,  and  as 
it  is  possible  to  produce  a  thousand  tons  of  feed  on  a 
single  acre,  the  imagination  conjures  up  the  time  when 
beef  will  once  more  be  as  abundant,  as  good,  and  as 


520  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

cheap  as  it  was  in  the  days  of  unlimited  pasturage. 

The  leaves  or  slabs  are  valuable  as  food  for  other 
farm  animals,  including  poultry. 

The  fruit,  also,  is  produced  in  enormous  quantity 
and  is  likely  to  become  as  important  in  our  markets  as 
bananas  and  oranges.  The  cactus  bearing  the  best 
fruit  is  not  yet  quite  spineless,  but  the  fine  bristles  on 
the  fruits  are  easily  removed  with  a  small  whiskbroom 
before  picking.  Burbank's  1912  Spineless  Cactus  bul- 
letin lists  more  than  a  dozen  varieties  cultivated  for  the 
fruit,  and  fifteen  varieties  raised  for  forage. 

The  cactus  fruit  "can  be  produced  at  less  than  one- 
tenth  the  expense  of  producing  apples,  oranges,  apri- 
cots, grapes,  plums,  or  peaches."  There  is  never  a 
failure  in  the  crop,  and  the  fruit  can  be  stored  like 
apples.  It  will  oust  the  injurious  "fillers"  and  adul- 
terants now  used  by  manufacturers.  Excellent  jams, 
jellies,  syrups,  marmalades  and  preserves  can  be  made 
of  cactus  fruit  at  a  minimum  cost.  For  candies  and 
for  pickling,  also,  it  can  be  used  to  advantage,  and  "the 
juice  from  the  fruits  of  the  crimson  varieties  is  used  for 
coloring  ices,  jelly  and  confectionery.  No  more  beau- 
tiful colors  can  be  imagined." 

Mr.  Burbank  takes  a  keen  delight  in  his  new  plants, 
and  like  other  artists,  he  likes  to  know  that  you  really 
see  and  feel  what  he  has  done.  When  we  vis- 
ited him  in  the  summer  of  1909,  in  company 
with    John    Burroughs     and    the     California    poet, 


GASTRONOMIC    AMERICA     521 

Charles  Keeler,  nothing  seemed  to  please  him  more 
than  the  proof  we  gave  that  we  were  actually  fa- 
miliar with  his  creations,  by  our  comments  on  the 
improvements  he  had  made  in  his  crimson  and  crimson- 
and-gold  California  poppies  and  the  wonderful  Shirleys 
since  we  last  raised  them,  the  previous  summer,  in  our 
Maine  grounds.  I  felt  like  Parsifal  in  the  enchanted 
garden.  We  had  a  chance  to  stroke  the  spineless  black- 
berry and  cactus,  and  to  taste  various  kinds  of  berries 
and  fruits  more  luscious  than  any  that  mortals  have 
eaten  since  the  Garden  of  Eden  was  destroyed. 


XII 

COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR 


PALATABILITY    DECIDES    PERMANENCE. 

UTHER  BURBANK  is,  as  already 
noted,  an  epicure.  No  one  enjoys  his 
new  products  more  than  he  does,  and 
in  his  bulletins  he  never  omits  to  call 
attention  to  the  "added  aromatic 
fragrance"  or  the  delicious  flavor  of 
his  improved  fruits. 

What  I  wish  particularly  to  call  attention  to  now, 
however,  is  that  he  fully  realizes  the  commercial  value 
of  Flavor.  He  holds,  as  Mr.  Harwood  wrote  in 
1905,  that  "it  is  highly  important  in  the  production  of  a 
new  fruit  or  vegetable  to  make  it  preeminently  palat- 
able, for,  in  the  last  analysis,  it  is  palatahility  that  de- 
cides the  permanence  of  any  new  food.  If  palatahility 
be  eliminated  as  a  factor,  then  mankind  is  prone  to 
consider  the  food, — no  matter  what  its  form  or  char- 
acter,— a  medicine,  to  be  taken  because  it  produces  cer- 
tain necessary  results." 

522 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     523 

When  I  informed  him  that  I  was  writing  a  book  on 
Food  and  Flavor  he  sent  me  a  long  letter,  dated  Decem- 
ber 18,  1912,  from  which  I  take  the  liberty  of  citing  the 
following  illuminating  paragraphs : 

"I  am  very  glad  that  you  have  taken  up  the  subject 
of  flavor  in  food.  It  is  a  far  more  important  matter 
than  most  people  believe.  Color  and  flavor  both  aid 
digestion  very  materially,  most  especially  flavor,  and 
my  work  from  the  first  has  been  among  food  and  drug 
plants  to  obtain  pure,  pleasing  flavors  (and  in  flowers, 
fragrance)  and  I  have  been  as  successful  in  that  line  as 
in  any  other  line  of  work. 

"Vegetables — like  celery,  cabbage,  cauliflower,  car- 
rots, turnips,  beets,  lettuce,  peas,  beans,  sweet  corn  and 
especially  artichokes,  have  not  only  had  ill  flavors,  but 
have  been  lacking  in  sweetness.  These  can  be  just  as 
readily  added  as  form,  size  or  color.  Even  the  pot 
herbs  need  attention  fully  as  much  as  anything  else, 
and  they  will  take  a  lot  of  time. 

"Take  savory,  sage,  or  any  other  herb  seedlings,  four 
out  of  five  of  them  will  have  a  poor  flavor,  while  the 
fifth  will  have  the  most  delicious  odor,  flavor  and  fra- 
grance.  Sometimes  only  one  in  a  hundred  or  so  has 
this  delightful  combination.  It  is  simply  a  matter  of 
selection  to  produce  these  herbs  so  that  all  will  have  the 
delightful  flavor  of  the  single  individual. 

"It  is  astounding  that  more  attention  has  not  been 
placed  on  this  line  of  plant  improvement,  though  until 


524  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

my  work  commenced  in  this  line  some  twenty-five  years 
ago,  no  one  seems  to  have  thought  that  these  changes 
could  be  made. 

"I  have  only  outlined  briefly  the  almost  infinite  num- 
ber of  improvements  that  could  be  named,  not  only 
in  the  plants  named,  but  in  all  other  plants  as  well  as 
fruits;  in  which  people  recognize  flavors  most  quickly. 

"It  is  almost  necessary  to  knock  a  man  down  before 
you  can  convince  him  that  there  are  differences  in 
flavors  of  herbs  and  vegetables,  or  that  such  things  as 
coffee,  cinnamon  and  other  plants  can  be  improved  in 
this  respect." 

EATING    WITH    THE    EYES. 

The  object  of  this  whole  book  is  to  furnish  a  "knock- 
down" argument  as  to  the  overwhelming  importance  of 
securing  the  best  flavors  in  food  and  to  demonstrate  at 
the  same  time  that  commercially  the  richest  Flavor  pays 
best. 

A  few  years  ago  Professor  J.  L.  Henderson  of  the 
Harvard  Medical  School  astonished  newspaper  readers 
by  saying  that  the  needed  food  for  one  person  costs  only 
ten  cents  a  day  and  that  the  rest  we  spend  goes  largely 
for  flavor. 

Had  he  made  this  remark  some  years  hence  he 
might  have  said  "goes  chiefly  for  flavor."  At  the 
present  time,  unfortunately,  not  a  few  purchasers  of 
foods  are  guided  to  a  considerable  extent  by  appear- 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     525 

ance.  Dr.  Wiley  has  written  trenchantly  on  the  widely 
prevalent  habit  of  "eating  with  the  eyes" — of  selecting 
articles  of  food  for  their  size  and  color  instead  of  their 
flavor.  Inferior  or  imitation  butter,  for  example,  is 
artificially  colored  and  the  ignorant  consumer  meekly 
buys  it.  The  epicure  buys  butter  for  its  Flavor  and 
the  dealer  cannot  deceive  his  eyes.  To  him,  in  the 
words  of  Dr.  Wiley,  "the  natural  tint  of  butter  is  as 
much  more  attractive  than  the  artificial  as  any  natural 
color  is  superior  to  the  artificial.  There  is  the  same  dif- 
ference between  the  natural  tint  of  butter  and  the 
artificial  as  there  is  between  the  natural  rose  of  the 
cheek  and  its  painted  substitute.  The  dairymen  of  our 
country  are  honest  and  honorable  and  evidently  do  not 
clearly  see  the  false  position  in  which  the  practice  of 
coloring  butter  puts  them.  When  the  dairymen  of  the 
country  understand  that  the  naturally  colored  products 
will  bring  the  highest  price  on  the  market  and  appeal 
more  strongly  to  the  confidence  of  the  consumer  it  is  be- 
lieved the  artificial  coloring  in  butter  will  be  relegated 
to  the  scrap  pile  of  useless  processes."  Natural  butter 
is  yellow  in  May  and  June;  but  whoever  buys  yellow 
butter  at  other  times  in  the  belief  that  it  is  fresh  is  a 
greenhorn.  Even  harmless  coloring  matter,  like  carrot 
juice,  is  objectionable,  because  it  makes  the  butter  spoil 
sooner. 

George  K.  Holmes,  Chief  of  the  Division  of  Foreign 
Markets,  contributed  to  the  Year-book  of  the  Depart- 


526  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

mcnt  of  Agriculture  for  1904  an  article  entitied  "Con- 
sumers' Fancies"  which  gives  some  curious  illustrations 
of  the  stupid  underrating  of  the  all-important  Flavor. 
To  cite  one  of  them:  "Although  it  may  seem  that  it 
is  positively  not  worth  while,  to  say  nothing  of  money, 
to  buy  a  nut  except  to  enjoy  its  flavor,  yet  to  taste  is 
assigned  only  25  per  cent.,  while  50  per  cent,  is  given  to 
the  eye,  the  remaining  25  per  cent,  going  to  the  con- 
venience of  cracking  the  shells." 

Judges  at  county  fairs  have  been  known  to  allow  20 
points  on  looks  and  only  15  on  the  flavor  of  foods. 
They  knew  that  city  folk  are  easily  fooled  by  appear- 
ances. On  this  point  Mr.  Holmes  remarks:  "In  the 
city,  a  large  city  especially,  the  appearance  of  an  apple 
is  everything  and  taste  nothing,  unless  the  purchaser 
was  once  a  coimtry  boy  and  enjoyed  the  freedom  of  an 
orchard."  And  again:  "Cit}-bred  people,  who  have 
little  knowledge  of  the  origin  and  real  character  of  food 
and  food  products,  such  as  the  country  man  has,  and 
who  have  no  childhood's  acquaintance  with  the  good 
things  of  the  farm,  are  especially  liable  to  suggestion; 
they  are  governed  largely  by  appearances  in  their  selec- 
tion of  farm  products  and  are  easily  deceived  by  the 
trick  of  a  false  name  or  a  false  ingredient  in  a  prepared 
foodr 

One  of  the  standing  jokes  in  our  comic  papers  con- 
cerns the  "hayseed"  who  comes  to  town  and  buys  a 
"gold  brick."     If  the  farmers  edited  comic  papers,  they 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     527 

would  have  a  standing  joke  about  the  cit}'  folk  who  buy 
their  showy  products,  leaving  them  the  best  flavored, 
which  may  not  appeal  to  the  eye. 

It  is  not  true,  however,  that  all  the  showy  fruits  are 
insipid  and  all  the  small  plain  fruits  full-flavored. 
The  delicious  Winter  Nellis  pear  is  not  nearly  as  pretty 
to  look  at  as  the  Bartlett,  yet  it  is  quite  as  popular, 
while  the  Bartlett  is  as  luscious  as  it  is  beautiful  and 
often  imposing  in  size,  especially  on  the  Pacific  Coast. 
Among  the  apples  in  our  markets,  also,  some  of  the  big- 
gest and  most  beautiful  are  the  best  to  eat. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  something  to  be 
said  in  favor  of  "eating  with  the  eyes."  Women 
naturally  want  the  apples  and  oranges,  the  berries  and 
vegetables,  and  the  viands  on  their  tables,  to  look  pretty 
and  inviting.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  why  they  should 
not  have  their  way.  The  eye  and  the  palate  can  be 
reconciled  by  breeding  fruits  and  vegetables  that  com- 
bine good  looks  with  agreeable  flavor. 

Luther  Burbank  has  done  the  world  a  tremendous 
service  by  originating  the  luscious  fruits  and  vegetables 
briefly  referred  to  in  the  preceding  chapter,  but  perhaps 
his  greatest  achievement  is  the  demonstration  that  there 
is  virtually  no  limit  to  obtaining  fruits  of  any  size, 
form,  or  flavor  desired,  and  that  the  good  looks  and 
flavor  can  be  amalgamated  at  pleasure  with  shipping 
and  keeping  qualities.  He  himself  is  preparing  many 
pleasant  surprises  of  this  kind  beside  those  I  have  re- 


528  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

ferred  to,  and  hundreds  of  others  are  profiting  by  his 
example  and  following  his  methods. 

SCHOOL    GIRLS    AS    PURE    FOOD    EXPERTS. 

Three  girls  in  a  Massachusetts  Normal  School  in 
1904  accidentally  launched  a  new  kind  of  pure  food 
movement  which  is  of  historic  importance,  as  it  puts  to 
shame  the  dilatory  methods  of  Federal  and  State  Gov- 
ernments. 

They  missed  their  lessons  one  day,  after  feasting  at 
a  surreptitious  midnight  spread  on  "strawberry"  jam. 
Their  chemistry  professor,  Lewis  B.  AUyn,  advised 
them  to  analyze  a  can  of  the  same  preserves  to  find  out 
what  there  was  in  it  that  could  have  made  them  ill. 
They  did  so,  and  found  that  the  jam  contained  no 
strawberries  at  all  but  was  made  of  apple  sauce,  ether, 
grass  seeds,  red  ink,  and  salicylic  acid. 

It  looked  all  right;  but  what  is  food  for  the  eye  is 
often  poison  for  the  stomach.  That  was  the  important 
lesson  this  incident  was  destined  to  teach  the  inhab- 
itants of  Westfield,  Massachusetts. 

Peter  Clarke  Macfarlane,  who  tells  the  whole  story 
grapically  in  "Collier's  Weekly"  for  January  11,  1913, 
writes : 

From  that  day  forward  the  girls  in  the  chemistry  class 
began  to  qualify  as  pure-food  experts.  They  examined  the 
canned  goods,  the  preserves,  the  medicines,  and  foods  of  every 
kind  that  came  from  the  stores  of  Westfield  into  the  homes  in 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     529 

which  they  lived.  The  housekeepers  were  appalled  to  find  the 
sort  of  thing  they  had  been  putting  upon  their  tables.  And  the 
grocers  were  somewhat  appalled,  but  much  more  annoyed.  It 
is  very  disturbing,  no  doubt,  to  have  the  canned  goods  you  make 
the  most  profit  on,  the  ones  that  bear  the  very  handsomest  litho- 
graphs, returned  almost  in  wheelbarrow  loads  because  of  some 
fussy  girls  stewing  chemicals  in  a  laboratory.  I  leave  it  to 
any  one  if  it  would  not  be  annoying  when  a  grocer  is  working 
energetically  to  build  up  trade  in  a  new  line  of  chocolate  which 
he  can  sell  in  larger  packages  for  less  money  than  chocolate  was 
ever  sold  before  to  have  a  miss  still  wearing  her  hair  in  braids 
say  right  out  loud  in  the  store  for  every  one  to  hear: 

"Pooh!  I  analyzed  that  in  class.  It  is  thirty  per  cent, 
cornstarch.  That  is  why  you  can  sell  it  cheaper  than  real 
chocolate.  And  it  has  potash  in  it,  too,  which  turns  to  suds 
when  you  add  water,  and  that 's  what  makes  it  look  so  deliciously 
creamy  and  frothy  when  you  pour  it  into  the  cups.  No  suds  in 
my  chocolate,  thank  you!" 

Professor  Allyn,  under  whose  guidance  this  epoch- 
making  crusade  was  undertaken — a  crusade  which 
should  and  could  be  carried  on  in  every  town  through- 
out the  country — was  elected  a  member  of  the  Board  of 
Health.  Opportunity  was  given  housekeepers  and  all 
others  who  suspected  foods  of  being  adulterated,  to 
have  them  examined  by  the  two  hundred  schoolgirls 
and  their  professor.  The  results  were  placed  on  exhi- 
bition in  the  Board  of  Health  Museum.  In  this  way 
Professor  Allyn  taught  tradesmen  that  it  does  not  pay 
to  handle  impure  goods  when  once  the  public  is  enlight- 
ened as  to  the  difference  between  what  looks  good  and 
what  is  good. 


530  FOOD    AND   FLAVOR 

The  Westfield  Board  of  Health  now  publishes  a  list 
of  foods  which  it  considers  pure.  With  that  list  in 
hand  it  is  safe  to  go  a-marketing.  Offending  manufac- 
turers and  dealers  have  been  converted  to  the  old  doc- 
trine that  honesty  is  the  best  policy,  and  the  plan,  alto- 
gether, has  worked  so  well  that  hundreds  of  letters  have 
come  to  the  secretary  of  the  Board  of  Health,  asking 
"How  can  we  give  our  town  a  pure-food  standard  like 
Westfield?" 

One  of  the  methods  Professor  AUyn  adopted  to  teach 
the  inhabitants  of  Westfield  the  folly  of  "eating  with 
the  eyes"  was  to  buy  a  can  of  peas,  open  it  in  presence 
of  an  audience,  and  pour  in  some  hydrochloric  acid,  a 
test  for  copper.  Then  he  inserted  a  gleaming  butcher 
knife  and  when  he  drew  it  out  a  few  moments  later  it 
was  coated  with  copper. 

Not  all  dye  stuffs  used  for  coloring  canned  or  other 
foods  are  as  objectionable  as  copper,  but  most  of  them 
are  undesirable  because,  as  Dr.  Wiley  has  pointed  out, 
they  make  it  possible  to  conceal  inferiority  of  material 
or  lack  of  freshness.  In  "Good  Housekeeping"  for  Feb- 
ruary, 1913,  Dr.  Wiley  had  an  article  headed  "Dan- 
ger in  Vivid  Green  Vegetables"  in  which  he  pointed  out 
that  after  a  delay  of  six  years  the  Remsen  Food  Board 
ratified  his  conclusions  that  the  sulphate  of  copper  used 
to  give  the  unnatural  bright  color  to  canned  peas,  beans, 
and  spinach  is  injurious  to  health  and  should  not  be 
allowed  in  foodstuffs.     "It  must  have  been  a  bitter  pill 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     531 

to  swallow,"  he  adds,  "for  were  they  not  appointed  in 
the  hope  that  Wiley  would  be  reversed  on  all  points?" 

Another  pure-food  expert  has  given  an  amusing 
recipe  for  making  a  bottle  of  maraschino  cherries: 

"Take  a  cherry  and  remove  the  stone.  Get  the  color 
out  by  holding  it  over  the  bleaching  fumes  of  sulphur. 
Remove  a  portion  of  the  fleshy  part  of  the  fruit  to  leave 
mostly  fiber.  Then  inject  some  artificial  sweet  sub- 
stance to  give  it  a  'body'  and  a  sugarlike  quality.  Dye 
it  with  a  brilliant  red  coal  tar  dye.  Put  it  in  a  bottle, 
and  sell  it  to  a  greenhorn." 

A  greenhorn  is  defined  in  the  dictionary  as  "a  person 
who  is  easily  imposed  upon."  You  prove  yourself  a 
greenhorn  if  you  go  into  a  grocery  store  and  buy  glasses 
of  preserved  fruits  and  vegetables  dyed  in  brilliant 
rainbow  hues  such  as  no  honest  fruit  ever  exhibits. 
You  show  yourself  a  greenhorn  if  you  buy  canned 
peaches  for  their  shape.  Peaches  picked  and  halved 
before  they  are  ripe  retain  their  shape  beautifully.  If 
you  want  to  eat  with  your  eyes  buy  this  kind  by  all 
means.  Peaches  picked  and  halved  when  the  sun  has 
ripened  them  on  the  tree  have  Flavor;  this  kind  is  for 
those  who  eat  with  their  mouth. 

Many  of  us  are  not  greenhorns.  We  would  buy 
more  California  peaches  in  winter  if  the  cans  had 
a  label  with  these  words  on  it:  "These  peaches  were 
picked  ripe ;  they  may  look  a  little  mushy,  but  they  are 
much  pleasanter  to  eat  than  those  which  are  picked  un- 


532  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

ripe  to  make  them  keep  their  shape.     Try  them  and 
note  the  difference." 

Fortunes  are  in  store  for  canners  wise  enough  thus  to 
recognize  the  commercial  value  of  Flavor  and  to  edu- 
cate the  public  in  this  simple  way,  as  well  as  by  adver- 
tising in  the  newspapers  and  magazines.  A  consumer 
who  has  eaten  some  of  the  flavorsome  ripe  peaches  will 
come  back  for  another  can — or  a  dozen  cans — ^much 
sooner  than  one  who  has  eaten  the  hard  insipid  halves 
of  unripe  peaches. 

PENNYWISE    DEALERS    AND    PINEAPPLES. 

Herbert  J.  Webber  relates  in  the  "Yearbook  of  the 
Department  of  Agriculture"  for  1905  that  when  the  de- 
partment's pineapple-breeding  experiments  were 
started,  the  question  of  what  varieties  to  cultivate  gave 
considerable  trouble.  Many  growers  insisted  that  the 
red  Spanish  was  by  far  the  best  variety,  because  of  its 
adaptability  to  open  field  culture,  freedom  from  dis- 
ease, and  good  shipping  qualities.  Others  contended 
that  "as  varieties  existed  that  were  of  far  better  quality 
and  flavor^  the  market  should  be  educated  to  demand 
these  better  so-called  fancy  fruits." 

The  words  I  have  italicized  indicate  a  difficulty 
which  confronts  us — a  problem  of  vast  and  national 
importance,  the  chief  impediment  to  our  getting  the 
best  varieties  of  fruits,  imported  as  well  as  domestic, 
and  of  vegetables,  too,  into  our  markets.     While  some 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     533 

dealers  are  sufficiently  astute  to  realize  that  sales  are 
multiplied  tenfold  if  the  best  fruits  and  vegetables  are 
offered,  the  ruling  majority  are  so  penny  wise  as  to  think 
only  of  the  shipping  and  keeping  qualities.  It  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  these  short-sighted  dealers  have 
entered  into  a  conspiracy  to  suppress  the  best  varieties 
because  their  greater  delicacy  and  juiciness  make  them 
more  perishable. 

The  story  of  the  pineapple  illustrates  this  point.  In 
the  Far  South,  where  this  luscious  fruit  grows,  its  frag- 
rance at  the  time  of  ripening  pervades  the  whole  neigh- 
borhood. In  our  markets  the  pineapple's  perfume  is  so 
faint  that  you  have  to  flatten  your  nose  against  it  be- 
fore you  get  any  at  all.  The  reason  is  that  these 
"pines"  not  only  are  usually  of  an  inferior  sort,  but  that 
they  are  picked  and  shipped  before  they  are  ripe. 

Bananas  picked  green  ripen  gradually  and  become 
sweet.  Not  so  pineapples.  What  happens  when  they 
are  picked  unripe  is  told  in  a  Bulletin  of  the  Hawaii 
Agricultural  Experiment  station  (1910)  kindly  for- 
warded to  me  by  one  of  the  officials  after  I  wrote  an 
article  on  the  subject  for  the  New  York  "Nation" : 

A  study  of  the  ripening  of  pineapples  has  disclosed  the  fact 
that  the  sugar  content  of  the  fruit  is  derived  exclusively  from 
the  leaves  of  the  plant  and  does  not  Increase  after  the  fruit  has 
been  removed  from  the  plant.  If  pineapples  are  picked  green 
and  allowed  to  ripen  the  sugar  content  at  complete  ripeness  Is 
the  same  as  it  was  when  the  fruit  was  removed  from  the  plants. 
An  analysis  of  the  fruit  shows  that  they  contain  no  substance 


534  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

which  can  be  changed  into  sugar  during  the  ripening  process. 
Fruits  picked  too  green  and  allowed  to  ripen,  therefore,  lack 
greatly  in  sugar  content  and  in  flavor.  The  sugar  content  of 
green  fruits,  or  fruits  ripened  after  being  picked  too  green,  is 
about  2  or  3  per  cent.,  while  that  of  fruits  ripened  on  the  plant 
ranges  from  9  to  15  per  cent. 

The  words  in  italics  give  the  gist  of  the  matter. 
"Pines"  picked  and  shipped  unripe  never  get  their  full 
Flavor,  and  its  unique  Flavor  is  the  one  thing  that 
makes  a  pineapple  desirable,  for  its  nutritive  value  is 
slight,  and  sweets  and  acids  can  be  more  conveniently 
and  cheaply  obtained  in  other  ways. 

Here  is  a  description  of  the  pineapple  at  home: 
"The  most  delicious  fruit  to  be  found  in  Brazil  is  the 
pineapple.  Northerners  who  eat  this  fruit  weeks  after 
it  has  been  picked  in  its  green  state  have  only  a  faint 
idea  of  its  sweetness,  lusciousness  and  delicious  flavor. 
Here  the  pineapple  is  picked  when  the  tropical  sun  has 
perfected  its  chemical  work,  and  the  fruit  is  ready  to 
melt  in  the  mouth.  It  would  be  an  affront  to  nature  to 
sprinkle  sugar  upon  it  when  sliced.  It  is  mellow,  over- 
running with  juice,  and  of  incomparable  flavor." 

Luther  Burbank  has  tried  to  cultivate  a  "pineapple 
Flavor"  in  other  fruits,  and  when  John  Burroughs 
found  it  in  his  new  "Patagonia"  strawberry,  he  was 
much  pleased.  It  is,  indeed,  such  an  exquisite  fra- 
grance that  one  would  imagine  the  importers  and  deal- 
ers would  think  of  it,  above  all  things,  as  a  bait  to  allure 
purchasers.     But  no;  most  of  these  gentlemen  attach, 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     535 

as  we  have  seen,  chief  importance  to  keeping  and  ship- 
ping qualities. 

The  consequence  of  this  pennywise  policy  is  that 
about  one-tenth  as  many  pineapples  are  sold  in  our 
markets  as  would  be  if  the  Commercial  Value  of  Flavor 
were  fully  recognized. 

The  canners,  it  is  instructive  to  note,  have  benefited 
by  the  mistake  of  their  competitors.  They  wait  till 
the  fruit  is  ripe  and  flavorsome  before  they  tin  it,  and 
that  is  the  reason  why  the  luscious  Hawaiian  canned 
pineapple  suddenly  sprang  into  such  great  favor.  In 
connection  with  this  fact  it  is  interesting  to  read  Dr. 
Wiley's  testimony  that  "canned  fruits  properly  pre- 
served retain  their  natural  aroma  and  flavor  better  than 
any  other  form  of  canned  food." 

The  rapidity  with  which  the  public  discovered  the 
excellence  of  this  Hawaiian  product  indicates  that  fresh 
pineapples  also  will  gain  enormously  in  favor  if  the 
dealers  will  only  supply  the  "fancy"  kinds  in  abun- 
dance and  at  reasonable  prices. 

What  the  enlightened  public  wants  is  not  only  Fla- 
vor, but  variety  in  Flavor.  Pomologist  William  A. 
Taylor  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Plant  Industry 
has  penned  a  maxim  which  dealers  cannot  ponder  too 
much.  "Attractive  diveusity  in  appearance  and  quality 
stimulates  a  demand  for  fruit  among  consumers." 
Yet,  as  another  Government  expert  attests,  "there  has 
for  many  years  been  a  strong  tendency  in  the  American 


536  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

fruit  trade  to  urge  fruit-growers  to  reduce  the  number 
of  varieties  in  their  commercial  plantations."  The 
results  we  see  in  our  markets.  Of  the  dozens  of  choice 
sorts  that  are  described  in  the  catalogues  of  nursery  and 
seedsmen  only  a  fraction  are  offered  to  consumers. 

SUCCESSFUL    PEACH-GROWERS. 

The  condition  into  which  those  pennywise  dealers 
who  are  indifferent  to  Flavor  and  oppose  variety  have 
brought  our  peach  market  is  a  national  disgrace  and  a 
gastronomic  calamity.  Most  of  the  Southern  peaches 
sent  North  seem  now  to  be  of  two  or  three  kinds  and 
those  not  of  the  best.  To  be  sure,  it  makes  little  differ- 
ence what  kinds  are  sent,  for  all  are  equally  spoiled  by 
being  picked,  like  the  pineapples,  before  they  are  ripe. 
California  peaches  melt  in  the  mouth  like  ice  cream — 
if  eaten  in  California.  In  the  East  they  used  to  con- 
trast with  Atlantic  Coast  peaches  by  their  leathery  con- 
sistency and  lack  of  Flavor,  due  to  the  fact  that  they 
had  to  be  picked  unripe  to  stand  transportation.  To- 
day they  contrast  less,  because  Eastern  peaches  also 
are  so  usually  picked  unripe. 

In  the  peach-growing  business,  under  present  con- 
ditions, "the  proportion  of  failures  to  successes  is  at 
least  as  ten  to  one,"  according  to  Erwin  F.  Smith.  The 
proportion  might  be  reversed  if  this  expert's  advice,  as 
given  in  "Peach-Growing  for  Market"  (Farmers'  Bul- 
letin No.  33),  were  generally  followed  by  farmers. 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     537 

The  most  important  point  he  makes  is  that  the  peaches 
to  be  marketed  successfully  must  not  only  have  size, 
color,  and  firmness  enough  to  stand  shipment,  but  also 
superior  flavor. 

It  was  by  leaving  his  peaches  on  the  tree  till  the  sun 
gave  them  that  superior  flavor  that  one  man  I  know  of 
became  rich.  He  had  an  orchard  about  twenty  miles 
from  New  York  and  when  the  first  crop  had  thoroughly 
ripened  he  picked  a  wagonload  to  take  to  the  city.  He 
never  reached  it.  Every  basket  was  sold  before  he  had 
gone  a  mile,  and  all  the  other  loads  were  thus  disposed 
of  to  his  neighbors,  although  he  charged  the  full  New 
York  retail  prices.  The  middleman's  usual  share  of 
the  plunder  remained  in  his  own  pocket. 

What  would  you  think,  Mr.  Farmer,  or  Mr.  Business- 
Man- Who- Wants-to-Live-in-the-Country,  of  buying  a 
twenty-two-acre  tract  of  worthless  pasture  land,  putting 
it  into  peaches,  and  getting  therefrom  in  twelve  years  a 
profit  of  $44,000? 

It  can  be  done,  and  it  has  been  done.  The  very  in- 
teresting and  instructive  story  was  told  in  detail  in  the 
Philadelphia  "Saturday  Evening  Post"  of  September 
lo,  1910,  by  Forrest  Crissey.  It  is  the  story  of  J.  H. 
Hale,  of  Glastonbury,  Connecticut.  One  day  he  came 
across  an  old  native  seedling  peach  tree,  loaded  with 
sweet  wild  fruit  that  had  a  delicious  flavor  and  melted 
in  his  mouth.  While  he  was  eating  one  of  these 
peaches,  the  thought  came  into  his  mind:     "If  this 


538  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

stony  old  hillside  will  grow  such  peaches  as  these,  wild 
and  without  cultivation,  what  is  to  hinder  its  produc- 
ing a  splendid  crop  of  choice,  cultivated  peaches'?" 

There  was  nothing  to  hinder;  the  trees  were  planted, 
and  when  they  bore  fruit  he  put  up  a  sign  reading: 
* 'Headquarters  for  Hale's  Peaches.  Peaches  Ripened 
on  the  Trees."  When  he  began  to  market  them  in  the 
cities  he  sorted  them  into  three  grades,  charging  fancy 
prices  for  the  best.  These  and  other  details  of  his 
method  helped;  but  the  great  secret  of  his  success  was 
painted  on  his  sign :  "  Peaches  Ripened  on  the  Trees^^ — 
a  sign  which  proved  that  he  understood  the  Commercial 
Value  of  Flavor,  which  made  him  a  millionaire. 

Apples,  fortunately,  do  not  need  to  ripen  entirely  on 
the  tree.  They  can  be  picked  before  they  are  ripe  and 
get  their  full  flavor  in  the  cellar.  Cold  storage  makes 
them  keep  longer  still — unfortunately,  I  feel  tempted  to 
say,  for  this  tempts  the  middleman  to  hold  them  for 
higher  prices  till  they  have  become  mealy  and  lost  much 
of  their  aroma.  Many  of  the  apples  sold  in  our  mar- 
kets in  winter  are  over  a  year  old.  They  will  not  be 
after  the  consumer  rises  to  assert  his  right  to  Flavor. 
The  English  are  more  alert.  I  most  earnestly  call  the 
attention  of  American  apple-growers  and  eaters  to  the 
following  sentences  from  an  article  in  the  Consular  and 
Trade  Reports  (April  5,  1911),  explaining  why 
Aiistralian  apples  have  an  advantage  in  English  and 
other  European  markets  over  American  fruit : 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     539 

"Cold  storage  extending  over  a  period  of  six  months 
is  not  the  best  means  of  preserving  the  flavor  of  a  fruit. 
On  the  other  hand  the  Australian  and  Tasmanian  crops 
being  six  months  later  than  the  American,  the  fruit 
comes  direct  from  the  orchard  with  its  original  flavor 
almost  unimpaired." 

At  the  Illinois  Experiment  Station  the  important 
fact  was  demonstrated  that  mature  apples  keep  much 
better  in  cold  storage  than  immature  apples  (Farmers' 
Bulletin  No.  193). 

The  new  method  of  pre-cooling  fruit,  especially 
peaches  and  oranges,  gives  much  hope  for  the  future. 
Two  illustrations  in  the  "Yearbook  of  the  Department 
of  Agriculture"  for  1909  illustrate  this  point.  One 
pictures  peaches  as  handled  and  delivered  in  New  York 
by  the  old  method — the  small,  pallid,  leathery,  flavor- 
less things  we  all  know  and  groan  over.  The  otheu 
shows  red,  ripe  peaches,  luscious  to  the  eyes  and  the 
palate  alike.  Pre-cooling  does  it;  for  if  this  method  is 
used,  "the  fruit  may  be  left  on  the  trees  to  attain  a 
greater  degree  of  maturity,  thus  assuming  a  much  bet- 
ter quality." 

FORTUNES    FROM    BANANAS    AND    ORANGES. 

When  other  fruits  have  vanished,  the  banana  is 
always  for  sale,  even  in  the  smallest  village  fruit  stores. 
But  it  was  not  always  so.  A  few  decades  ago  the 
banana  was  a  rarity  in  the  United  States  and  a  luxury. 


540  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

How  did  it  happen  to  get  its  present  vogue?  Was  it 
because  the  public  discovered  that  there  is  a  great  deal 
of  nourishment  in  this  fruit — that  millions  in  the  tropics 
live  on  it?  Not  in  the  least;  I  doubt  if  one  banana- 
eater  in  a  hundred  knows  or  cares  whether  or  not  it  con- 
tains even  as  much  nourishment  as  a  cucumber  or  a 
watermelon.  What  has  given  the  banana  its  great 
vogue  is  simply  and  solely  its  delicious  Flavor.  In  its 
Flavor  lies  its  commercial  value;  its  Flavor  has  put 
money — often  a  fortune — into  the  pockets  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  planters,  shippers,  and  wholesale  and 
retail  dealers.  There  are  whole  fleets  of  steamers  for 
carrying  bananas  to  American  ports,  and  other  fleets 
carry  them  to  Germany,  to  England,  to  France,  and 
other  European  countries.  In  Germany,  320  tons  sup- 
plied the  demand  in  1899;  in  191 1  the  imports  exceeded 
30,000  tons,  and  the  demand  grows  like  an  avalanche. 
Banana' flour,  made  from  the  dried  fruit,  also  has  a 
great  future  as  a  breakfast  cereal.  A  few  years  ago  a 
new  source  of  profit  was  opened.  Have  you  ever  eaten 
any  "banana  figs"?  If  not,  try  them  at  once;  they  are 
deliciously  sweet,  and  they  can  be  freely  eaten  by  those 
who  have  to  avoid  figs  because  of  their  innumerable 
small  seeds.  Within  a  few  years  seven  factories 
sprang  up  in  Jamaica,  all  of  them  coining  money  by 
making  and  exporting  "banana  figs"  as  well  as  "fig 
bananas,"  which  differ  from  the  others  in  being  dried 
whole. 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     541 

In  1912  the  people  of  the  United  States  consumed 
over  six  billion  bananas,  or  more  than  five  dozen  for 
every  man,  woman,  and  child,  the  value  of  them  ex- 
ceeding fourteen  million  dollars.  Yet  this  enormous 
demand  is  a  trifle  to  what  it  will  be  when  the  public  has 
learned  how  to  eat  them.  Few  know  how  delicious 
they  are  fried,  or  cooked  in  other  ways.  As  for  raw 
bananas,  most  Americans  still  eat  them  with  the  eyes, 
selecting  those  which  are  bright  yellow  (or  red)  and 
unspotted,  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  the  most  luscious 
by  far  are  those  that  are  spotted  or  almost  black;  the 
pushcartmen  sell  them  at  a  cent  apiece,  or  two  for  a 
cent.  These  are  not  rotten,  but  simply  ripe,  as  long 
as  they  are  white  inside.  They  are  much  more  digest- 
ible, too,  than  the  unspotted  ones.  To  make  them  still 
more  so,  follow  the  advice  of  "Tip"  of  the  New  York 
"Press,"  who  writes: 

I  have  had  men  and  women  tell  me  they  could  n't  eat  bananas 
at  all  without  suffering  from  indigestion,  and  to  them  I  always 
pass  on  the  recipe  told  me  by  a  great  lover  of  the  fruit  who  said 
that  invariably  he  scraped  off  the  little  fuzz  remaining  on  the 
banana  after  the  skin  is  peeled  off.  Before  he  began  to  do  this 
the  fruit  disagreed  with  him;  afterward  he  ate  as  much  of  it 
as  he  pleased. 

Unlike  bananas,  the  citrus  fruits — oranges,  lemons, 
and  pomelos  (grapefruit)  have  no  nutritive  value 
worth  talking  about.  You  might  eat  a  hundred  of 
them  a  day  and — well,  if  they  did  n't  kill  you  they 


542  FOOD   AND   FLAVOR 

would  n't  keep  you  alive  either.  Consequently  the 
fortunes  made  by  growing  annually  twenty  million 
boxes  of  these  much-coveted  fruits  and  distributing 
them  throughout  the  country,  once  more  attest  the 
Commercial  Value  of  Flavor.  And  in  the  long  run 
the  best  flavored  are  sure  to  survive,  even  though  for  a 
time  greenhorns  may  be  fooled  into  buying  inferior 
kinds  because  of  size  or  color. 

MELONS,    HONEY    AND    FLAVORING    EXTRACTS. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  how  many  million 
dollars  American  farmers  earn  every  year  by  raising 
melons.  The  Rocky  Ford  district  in  Colorado  alone 
ships  about  1,500  carloads  of  cantaloupes,  and  these 
are  but  a  drop  in  the  bucket.  Nobody  would  dream  of 
buying  melons  for  food;  their  commercial  value  is  en- 
tirely a  matter  of  Flavor.  And  in  proportion  as  the 
Flavor  was  improved  has  the  raising  of  melons  become 
more  profitable.  Time  was  when  the  old-fashioned 
"mushmelon"  was  tolerated;  but  compared  with  the 
choice  varieties  of  cantaloupes  now  in  the  market  it  was 
but  one  remove  from  the  pumpkin.  Many  insipid  mel- 
ons still  find  their  way  into  our  markets,  but  gradually 
they  will  be  eliminated;  and  the  sooner  this  is  done,  the 
better  it  will  be  for  the  dealer's  purse  as  well  as  the 
consumer's  palate. 

The  manufacturer  who  advertises  that  "there  is  only 
one  way  to  make  a  cigarette  permanently  popular  and 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     543 

that  is  to  make  it  permanently  good,"  knew  what  he 
was  talking  about.  In  that  respect  there  is  no  differ- 
ence between  cigarettes  and  foodstuffs.  Read  what  is 
said  on  this  point  in  Farmers'  Bulletin  193:  "An  ex- 
planation of  the  popularity  of  the  Rocky  Ford  melons  is 
that  they  are  well  graded  and  usually  uniform  in  qual- 
ity. As  Mr.  Blinn  explains,  the  Rocky  Ford  canta- 
loupe is  a  product  of  years  of  systematic  selection,  and 
it  requires  the  same  methods  to  maintain  its  excellence 
as  were  employed  in  its  development.  Without  care 
in  selection  of  seed,  the  natural  tendency  to  vary  will 
soon  cause  a  good  strain  of  Rocky  Ford  melons  to  re- 
vert to  an  undesirable  type." 

Sweet  as  honey  are  the  best  cantaloupes ;  yet  how  dif- 
ferent !  The  sweetness  in  them  is  the  same,  for  there  is 
only  one  kind  of  sweet  in  the  world.  What  makes 
them  differ  is  the  Flavor.  Were  it  not  for  its  Flavor, 
there  would  be  no  honey  in  the  market,  for  sugar  is  a 
much  cheaper  sweet.  Thanks  to  its  Flavor,  honey  is 
worth  to  the  beekeepers  of  the  United  States  $20,000,- 
000  a  year.  New  York  State  alone  has  30,000  bee- 
keepers, and  it  is  said  that  "even  when  eggs  sell  at  50 
cents  a  dozen  the  hen  stands  below  the  bee  as  a  payer 
of  dividends."  And  bees  need  no  expensive  feed;  one 
man  says  he  has  not  fed  his  in  twenty  years. 

Twenty  millions  a  year  is  a  goodly  sum,  yet  it  is 
a  mere  fraction  of  what  honey  will  yield  when  its  merits 
for  diverse  uses  are  more  generally  understood.     There 


544  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

are  many  varieties  of  it,  their  Flavor  depending  on  the 
fragrance  of  the  flowers  from  which  the  bees  collect 
them — clover,  linden,  sage,  horsemint,  buckwheat,  mag- 
nolia, etc.,  but  all  are  agreeable  to  most  persons. 
American  children  would  hail  with  delight  the  Swiss 
custom  of  eating  honey  with  their  bread  and  butter,  and 
it  would  do  them  good,  for  honey  is  one  of  the  most 
wholesome  sweets — ^much  more  than  most  of  the  can- 
dies the  boys  and  girls  buy.  It  is  nutritious,  too,  a 
tablespoonful  having  the  same  food  value  as  an  egg. 
But  beware  of  adulterations ! 

Some  of  the  best  cakes  and  confections  are  made  of 
or  with  honey.  Girls  often  make  their  own  fudge — 
why  not  all  their  candies'?  The  manufacturers  would 
still  prosper  even  if  one-half  the  girls  should  take  to 
making  their  own  sweets;  some  of  these  men  are  mil- 
lionaires; and  what  made  them  so  is  the  fact  that  they 
realized  the  Commercial  Value  of  Flavors.  The  sale 
of  plain,  unflavored  sugar  is  also  profitable,  but  the  per- 
centage of  gain  is  not  nearly  so  great  as  in  the  case  of 
candy. 

Flavoring  extracts  have  been  called  an  American  spe- 
cialty; for  while  they  are  used  considerably  by 
foreign  cooks  and  bakers,  ours  are  much  more  addicted 
to  their  use.  The  most  popular  of  all  the  flavoring  ex- 
tracts is  vanilla;  its  home  is  Mexico,  and  we  take  nearly 
all  the  vanilla  beans  harvested  there ;  but  that  does  not 
cover  the  demand.     Many  firms  get  rich  by  making 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     545 

imitation  vanilla  and  other  flavors.  Some  of  these  are 
strong  medicines.  The  safest  place  to  eat  vanilla  ice 
cream  is  at  home  where  you  know  it  is  made  of  the  de- 
liciously  fragrant  bean  and  not  of  coal  tar  products. 

Most  appetizing,  also,  is  caramel,  or  burnt  sugar,  for 
flavoring  desserts.  Liqueurs  are  used,  and  nuts,  but 
most  desirable  and  wholesome  of  all  are  the  flavors 
made  of  fruit.  Think  of  the  commercial  value  of  these 
fruit  flavors — natural  or  artificial — to  thousands  of 
druggists  whenever  the  weather  creates  a  demand  for 
soda  water ! 

OPPORTUNITIES    FOR    WOMEN. 

Many  women  make  a  comfortable  living  by  utilizing 
their  inherited  or  acquired  knowledge  of  the  kind  of 
flavoring  that  will  make  certain  cakes  and  candies  sell 
briskly.  Along  these  lines  there  are  unlimited  oppor- 
tunities for  commercial  gain. 

Many  novelists  have  coined  large  sums  by  exploiting 
local  color  in  their  tales.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  local 
flavor,  too,  which  awaits  the  attention  of  the  women  or 
men  bright  enough  to  utilize  it.  Wild  fruits  and  ber- 
ries, for  instance,  abound  all  over  the  country,  many 
of  them  being  peculiar  to  one  region.  These  can  be 
used  for  imparting  their  flavor  to  various  fruit  syrups, 
jams,  and  jellies.  In  the  future,  thousands  of  women 
will  doubtless  earn  a  competence  by  sending  to  the  city 
markets  preserves  with  such  novel  and  appetizing  local 


546  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

flavors.  Some  are  already  doing  it,  and  they  have 
found  a  demand  at  the  women's  exchanges  usually  far 
in  excess  of  the  supply. 

The  delicious  loganberry,  now  so  plentiful  on  the 
Pacific  Coast,  is  hardly  known  in  the  East.  Here  is  a 
grand  opportunity;  and  why  has  no  one  thought  of  the 
commercial  possibilities  inherent  in  the  luscious  mul- 
berry— an  incomprehensibly  neglected  delicacy*?  There 
is  the  salmonberry,  too,  and  other  good  things  of  the 
West,  notably  in  Alaska,  which  has  been  called  "pre- 
eminently a  land  of  small  fruits  and  berries."  The 
flavor  of  most  of  the  Alaskan  berries  was  found  to  be 
excellent,  by  Walter  W.  Evans.^ 

Alaska's  gold  mines  will  ultimately  be  exhausted, 
but  the  commercial  value  of  the  rich  and  unique  flavors 
of  these  fruits  and  berries  will  endure.  Excellent  pre- 
serves can  be  made  of  the  wild  "Oregon  grape,"  as  well 
as  the  service  berries,  unknown  in  the  East.  The  dry 
salal  berry  of  Oregon  and  Washington  might  be  edu- 
cated and  turned  to  use;  and  there  are  many  others. 

FEEDING  FLAVOR  INTO  FOOD. 

The  present  chapter  might  be  made  as  long  as  this 
whole  book  is,  for  the  Flavor  is  what  determines  the 
commercial  value  of  nearly  all  foodstuffs.  I  know 
a    young    woman    who    makes    deliciously  -  flavored 

1  "See  Bailey's  "The  Evolution  of  our  Native  Fruits"  for  useful 
hints   along  these  lines. 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     547 

butter  and  has  no  trouble  in  disposing  of  it  for  a  dollar 
a  pound.  Thousands  of  persons  who  do  not  like  the 
butter  they  can  buy  are  now  eating  peanut  butter,  which 
has  the  full  flavor  of  the  nut.  The  commercial  value 
of  this  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  1911  a  million 
bushels  of  peanuts  were  converted  into  "butter." 
Fortunes  await  those  who  will  manufacture  almond 
"butter,"  because  almonds  not  only  have  a  more  deli- 
cate flavor  but  are  more  digestible  than  peanuts. 

Storage  eggs  are  quite  as  nutritious  as  fresh  eggs;  the 
sole  difference  is  in  the  Flavor;  and  those  of  us  who 
can  afford  to  do  so,  gladly  pay  twice  as  much  to  get  the 
better  flavor. 

In  the  preceding  chapters  I  have  frequently  called 
attention  to  the  greater  commercial  value  of  the  best- 
flavored  foods — as  in  the  case  of  the  Bresse  chickens, 
Wiltshire  bacon,  Southdown  mutton,  Westphalian 
ham,  Hungarian  flour,  full-cream  cheeses,  etc.  For  a 
full  list  see  the  index  under  "Commercial  Value  of 
Flavor."  In  this  chapter  I  will  call  attention  to  only 
one  more  way  of  increasing  the  value  of  things  we  buy 
to  eat.  It  is  perhaps  the  most  important  of  all 
methods — one  which  points  the  way  to  many  large  for- 
tunes. 

Once  when  I  crossed  the  Atlantic  westward  on  a  Ger- 
man steamer  the  supply  of  eggs,  calculated  for  nine  or 
ten  days,  gave  out  on  the  fourth  because  nearly  every- 
body on  board  was  ordering  them  constantly.     They 


548  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

were  the  best  eggs  I  had  ever  eaten.  The  head  steward, 
on  being  questioned,  explained  that  they  came  from  a 
farm  where  a  special  kind  of  feed  was  given  to  the  hens. 
The  farmer  had  fed  that  Flavor  into  the  eggs. 

At  once  it  flashed  on  me  that  great  and  profitable  in- 
dustries might  be  built  up  along  that  line  and  I  wrote 
an  article  about  it  for  The  Epoch.  That  was  more  than 
two  decades  ago.  At  that  time  there  was  not  the  same 
interest  there  is  now  in  dietary  questions.  More  re- 
cently, the  Department  of  Agriculture  has  taken  up  the 
matter  and  in  several  of  its  bulletins  reference  is  made 
to  experiments  in  feeding  both  unpleasant  and  pleasant 
flavors  into  food. 

At  the  North  Carolina  Experiment  Station,  in  1909, 
hens  were  fed  for  two  weeks  on  onions,  the  result  being 
so  strong  an  onion  flavor  in  the  eggs  that  they  could  not 
be  used.  A  week  after  discontinuing  the  onions,  the 
hens  again  laid  eggs  of  normal  flavor. 

Milk  and  butter  are  similarly  spoiled  when  the  cows 
eat  wild  garlic  or  quantities  of  turnips.  Everybody 
knows,  too,  that  some  kinds  of  ducks  are  not  fit  to  eat 
because  of  the  fish  they  live  on.  In  Egypt  a  locust  diet 
makes  poultry  unfit  to  eat,  and  sometimes  there  are  in 
our  markets  chickens  that  are  unobjectionable  except 
for  an  insect  tang  which  mars  their  flavor.  Pork  from 
pigs  fed  on  garbage  is  spoiled  by  a  worse  tang. 

On  the  other  hand,  most  animal  foods  can  be  im- 
proved by  feeding  desirable  flavors  into  them.     Grouse 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     549 

are  best  in  blueberry  season,  and  the  flavor  of  all  game 
varies  with  its  feed.  Kongo  chickens  fed  on  pine- 
apples are  said  to  be  a  morsel  fit  for  the  gods.  Belgian 
partridges  owe  their  excellence  to  the  beetroot  they 
feed  on. 

Mexican  pigs  are  often  fattened  on  bananas.  They 
must  make  prime  pork.  In  the  chapter  on  England 
I  noted  that  it  is  chiefly  the  excellence  of  the  feed 
(skim  milk  and  barley)  that  determines  the  superior 
flavor  and  commerical  value  of  Wiltshire  bacon. 

In  the  good  old  times,  before  our  forests  were  de- 
stroyed, the  beechnut  was  the  principal  food  for 
swine. 

"The  hogs  which  are  fattened  by  eating  the  beechnut 
and  acorn  produced  a  species  of  pork  of  a  peculiar  and 
very  highly  prized  flavor,"  writes  Dr.  Wiley.  "The 
celebrated  hams  and  bacons  of  the  southern  Ap- 
palachian ranges  were  produced  from  the  variety  of 
hogs  known  as  the  razor-backs  fattened  on  mast, 
namely,  the  chestnut,  beechnut,  and  acorn."  Yams 
(belonging  to  the  sweet-potato  class)  also  help  to 
flavor  these  southern  pork  products. 

The  ham  and  bacon  which  made  Virginia  beloved  of 
epicures  helped  also  to  make  the  neighboring  Baltimore 
one  of  the  country's  gastronomic  centers.  In  the  days 
when  canvasback  ducks  and  diamondback  terrapin  were 
abundant  Baltimore  was  the  gourmet's  headquarters. 
There  were  terrapin  palaces  in  those  days,  in  Baltimore 


5 so  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

and  Philadelphia,  as  now  there  are  lobster  palaces  in  all 
our  large  cities. 

It  has  been  stated  frequently  that  the  canvasback  and 
red-head  ducks  and  the  diamondback  terrapin  owe  their 
superior  flavor  to  the  food  they  have  in  common,  the 
so-called  wild  celery,  which  grows  in  abundance  in 
Chesapeake  Bay.  Now,  this  "wild  celery"  is  no  celery 
at  all ;  it  botanical  name  is  valisneria.  A  correspondent 
of  the  Philadelphia  "Ledger"  has,  moreover,  cast  doubt 
on  the  claim  that  it  is  the  valisnerza  grass  that  so  agree- 
ably flavors  these  birds  and  turtles.  He  found  the 
ducks  feeding  greedily  on  the  seeds  of  a  species  of 
pondweed,  potamogeton  pectinatus.  Tasting  these 
seeds  he  found  a  distinct  flavor  of  celery  and  became 
convinced  that  it  was  this  and  not  the  valisnerza  that 
gave  the  bird  its  peculiar  flavor.  The  point  ought  to  be 
settled  by  scientific  experts,  for  if  this  sportsman  is  cor- 
rect in  his  surmise,  the  efforts  that  are  being  made  to 
breed  and  multiply  these  ducks  need  not  be  confined  to 
Chesapeake  Bay,  as  that  pondweed  is  also  abundant 
along  the  big  lakes  which  separate  us  from  Canada. 

Why  should  not  farmers  cultivate  this  weed  in  ponds 
and  improve  the  flavor  of  the  ordinary  domestic  duck? 
The  flavor  imparted  by  the  'potamogeton — or  the 
valisnerza — is  so  rich  that  when  a  canvasback  is  cooked 
it  needs  no  dressing,  not  even  salt. 

An  American  consul  in  Mexico  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  rivers  and  lagoons  of  that  country  "liter- 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     551 

ally  swarm  with  turtles."  "The  wastes  of  water 
hyacinth  are  simply  alive  with  them."  These  turtles, 
he  says,  are  fat  and  fine  of  flesh  and  under  careful 
handling  would  give  a  good  return  to  the  man  who  un- 
dertakes to  ship  them  to  the  United  States.  "There  is 
a  small  swamp  turtle  called  the  'pochitoque,'  which  is 
of  extremely  fine  flesh  and  flavor.  It  is  found  in  great 
numbers  in  the  swamps  and  lands  that  are  annually 
overflowed  in  the  State  of  Tobasco  and  is  very  similar 
and  quite  equal  to  the  famous  diamondhack  turtle. 
This  also  could  be  readily  shipped  to  northern  markets. 
It  is  not  quite  so  abundant  as  the  river  turtle,  but  would 
find  ready  sale  at  fancy  prices  in  view  of  the  diminish- 
ing supply  of  the  diamondback." 

In  these  days,  when  there  is  so  much  complaint  about 
all  trades  and  occupations  being  overcrowded,  it  is 
strange  that  no  one  should  have  the  sagacity  to  see  the 
commercial  value  of  catering  to  the  demand  for  fine 
turtles.  Sea  and  pond  farming  of  all  kinds  holds  in  it 
a  greater  promise  of  wealth  than  all  the  world's  mines. 
Terrapin-growing  will  be  one  of  the  great  industries  of 
the  future. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  the  old  Roman  epicures  al- 
ready had  their  ponds  for  rearing  fishes  of  superior 
flavor  as  well  as  aviaries  for  feeding  flavor  into  birds. 
Nero's  fish  pond  was  discovered  in  1913.  Lucullus 
and  Apicius  had  aviaries  in  which  thrushes  and  black- 
birds were  fattened  for  their  tables  on  a  paste  made 


552  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

with  figs,  wheaten  meal  and  aromatic  grain.  But  such 
things  were  only  for  the  very  rich.  What  we  want, 
and  will  get  if  we  insist  on  it,  are  delicacies  for  the  mil- 
lion. 

Most  if  not  all  animal  foods  can  be  improved  by 
feeding  desirable  flavors  into  them.  In  Farmers'  Bul- 
letin No.  200  the  well-known  poultry  expert,  T.  F. 
McGrew,  says  that  those  who  grow  turkeys  for  a  fancy 
market  give  them  chestnuts  and  celeryseed  during  the 
last  few  weeks  of  fattening.  Such  feeding,  he  adds, 
imparts  a  flavor  which  makes  the  meat  worth  from  nine 
to  twelve  cents  a  pound  ?nore  than  that  of  ordinary  tur- 
keys. Yet  ''to  grow  the  best  is  quite  as  easy  and  but 
little  more  expensive  than  to  grow  the  poorer  grades^ 
and  the  profit  gained  is  almost  doubled" 

Could  the  commercial  value  of  Flavor  be  more  tri- 
umphantly demonstrated"?  If  the  best  costs  but  little 
more  to  produce  than  the  poorest,  why  not  cater  to  the 
million  and  make  millions'?  Why  pay  so  much  atten- 
tion to  breed  when,  as  another  expert,  S.  M.  Tracey, 
attests  (Farmers'  Bulletin  No.  loo),  "management  and 
feed  are  more  important  than  breed"  ^ 

We  have  over  a  hundred  varieties  of  chickens,  but  the 
best  of  them,  improperly  fed,  are  not  so  good  to  eat  as 
inferior  varieties  that  have  had  the  right  kind  of  feed 
during  the  last  two  or  three  weeks.  That  hogs,  too, 
and  other  animals,  need  to  have  fancy  feed  only  a  few 
weeks  to  give  them  a  flavor  that  commands  a  high  price, 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     553 

is  a  matter  of  extreme  importance  from  an  economic 
point  of  view. 

Producers  of  meat — and  other  foods — would  make 
much  more  money  if,  instead  of  offering  the  poorest 
that  people  will  buy  at  the  highest  price,  they  supplied 
the  best  at  the  lowest  price.  Other  merchants  discov- 
ered this  truth  long  ago. 

FARMERS,    MIDDLEMEN,   AND   PARCEL   POST. 

Thousands  of  families  in  Germany  and  France  have 
been  able  for  years  to  indulge  in  the  luxury  of  getting 
daily  pats  of  fresh  butter,  as  well  as  new-laid  eggs, 
freshly-killed  chickens,  and  succulent  vegetables  straight 
from  the  farmer's  garden,  thanks  to  the  parcel  post- 
man. We,  too,  now  have  a  parcel  post  and  many  look 
on  it  as  a  means  of  lowering  the  cost  of  living.  It  is 
that,  no  doubt;  but  it  is  more  important  from  another 
point  of  view :  it  enables  those  who  are  fastidious  as  to 
what  they  eat  to  dodge  the  greengrocer  who  tries  to  foist 
on  them  farm  produce  which  is  not  fresh  and  flavor- 
some;  as  well  as  poultrymen  who  refuse  to  heed  the 
demand  for  fresh-killed  fowls. 

New  plans  for  bringing  the  consumer  into  direct  con- 
tact with  the  producer  are  discussed  in  the  press  every 
other  day,  and  there  is  a  great  deal  of  talk  about  "elim- 
inating the  middlemen."  Some  of  these  undoubtedly 
ought  to  be  ousted.  There  is  no  need  of  having  four 
kinds  of  them — transportation  agents,  wholesalers,  job- 


554  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

bers,  and  retailers.  Some  of  these  could  be  dispensed 
with,  especially  those  who  speculate  in  food  products. 
To  make  war  on  retailers  is  an  excusable  proceeding, 
because  of  their  frequent  extortionate  charges;  yet  we 
could  not  get  along  entirely  without  them.  Not  all  of 
us  can  deal  directly  with  the  farmer,  and  those  of  us 
who  do  so  are  sure  to  find  some  day  that  he  has  sold  his 
last  turkey  or  his  last  head  of  lettuce — and  then  we 
have  to  fall  back  on  the  grocer  or  the  butcher.  With- 
out the  latter,  where  would  we  get  some  of  our  meats? 
If  he  is  honest  and  knows  his  business,  as  he  usually  is 
and  does,  he  is  a  specialist  in  the  judging,  handling,  and 
cutting  of  meats.  For  this  knowledge,  and  for  the 
opportunity  he  gives  us  to  buy  any  kind  of  meat  we 
want  at  any  time,  he  deserves  to  be  paid,  and  well 
paid. 

The  chief  trouble  about  the  retail  middlemen  is  that 
there  are  too  many  of  them.  They  declare  that  there 
are  more  failures  in  their  trade  than  in  any  other,  and 
no  wonder.  In  the  fierce  struggle  for  existence  they 
resort  to  all  sorts  of  tricks  to  deceive  customers — an  evil 
of  which  enough  has  been  said  in  these  pages. 

If  one-half  of  these  retailers  could  be  transferred  to 
the  country,  to  become  growers  of  food  instead  of  dis- 
tributors, there  would  be  few  failures  and  the  cost  of 
living  would  be  reduced.  There  is  no  doubt  whatever 
that  the  ever-rising  price  of  foodstuffs  is  due  chiefly  to 
the  alarming  increase  in  the  number  of  consumers,  with 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     555 

a  corresponding  decrease  in  the  number  of  producers. 

Particularly  unfortunate  is  the  disinclination  of 
farmers  to  raise  vegetables  and  small  fruits  for  the  mar- 
ket, or  even  for  their  own  tables  in  many  cases. 
"Western  Canada,"  we  read,  "presents  the  peculiar 
anomaly  of  a  wonderfully  productive  agricultural  coun- 
try importing  most  of  its  food  products."  Special 
efforts  were  made  during  1911  "to  awaken  the  farmers 
to  the  value  of  mixed  farming,"  but  without  much  suc- 
cess. 

The  same  trouble  exists  in  the  United  States,  even  in 
regions  where  the  soil  is  less  adapted  for  the  growing  of 
wheat  by  the  mile  than  in  Western  Canada.  Yet  it 
has  been  proved  again  and  again  that  much  more  money 
can  be  made  by  intensive  methods  on  small  farms 
than  by  growing  grain  on  a  large  scale.  It  was  this 
discovery  that  led  to  the  decrease  in  the  acreage  of 
wheat  grown  in  California  and  Oregon. 

"I  have  made  a  careful  study  of  the  conditions  of 
agriculture  in  the  Santa  Clara,  San  Jose  and  Sacra- 
mento valleys,  and  I  am  irresistibly  led  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  great  ranches  must  be  broken  up  into  small 
holdings  before  permanent  prosperity  can  come  to  the 
farmers  of  the  Pacific  Coast,"  remarks  Professor  Isaac 
Roberts,  Dean  of  the  College  of  Agriculture,  Cornell 
University,  in  an  admirable  little  book  published  by 
the  Orang  Judd  Company.  It  is  entitled  "Ten  Acres 
Enough,"  and  is  just  the  book  for  those  who  feel  in- 


556  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

clined  to  leave  the  overcrowded  cities  and  lead  a  busy 
but  prosperous  life  in  the  country. 

To  realize  what  could  be  done  to  increase  this  coun- 
try's natural  resources,  read  Professor  F.  H.  King's 


Chinese    Canal 

article  in  the  "National  Geographic  Magazine"  for  Oc- 
tober, 1912,  describing  China's  wonderful  system  of 
canals  for  transportation,  drainage,  irrigation,  and 
fertilization,  with  the  aid  of  which  a  population  of 
400,000,000,  tilling  a  region  not  a  third  as  large  as  the 
United  States,  has  subsisted  for  thousands  of  years. 


COMMERCIAL  VALUE  OF  FLAVOR     557 

We  need  not  go  as  far  as  China,  however,  for  a  good 
example.  The  market  gardens  of  Paris,  to  which  ref- 
erence was  made  in  Chapter  VII,  convincingly  prove 
the  commercial  wisdom  of  intensive  farming  and  of 
providing  city  folk  with  the  tenderest  and  most  flavor- 
some  vegetables,  berries,  and  fruits.  We  have  too 
much  "long-distance  food"  (canned  or  frozen) ;  what 
we  want  is  short-distance  produce. 

Paris  is  the  model  for  us;  it  enjoys  what  Professor 
Ferrero,  in  Le  Figaro^  has  rightly  called  the  ideal  con- 
dition, being  a  city  fed  by  fresh  supplies  from  the  ad- 
jacent country.  Our  aim  should  be  to  make  each  of 
our  large  cities  a  "hub"  connected  by  thousands  of 
spokes  with  suburban  market  gardens. 

In  these  gardens  women  as  well  as  men  can  find 
emplo)^ment;  it  has  been  claimed  that  their  careful 
truck  farming  in  garden  and  field  shows  better  results 
than  the  work  of  men. 

Short-distance  farming  increases  profits  by  decreas- 
ing transportation  charges.  A  vivid  illustration  of 
future  possibilities  is  given  by  an  expert  in  these 
words:  "Long  Island  is  about  the  size  of  Holland. 
Its  population  is  about  the  same.  The  produce  taken 
out  of  the  soil  in  Holland  is  twenty-one  times  that 
which  is  taken  from  the  soil  of  Long  Island.  If  Long 
Island  were  brought  under  proper  cultivation  it  alone 
would  produce  the  larger  part  of  the  vegetable  prod- 
ucts required  by  the  six  millions  of  people  in  New 


558  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

York  City  and  vicinity."     The  retail  middleman  and 
the  parcel  post  would  in  that  case  suffice. 

At  present  the  big  profits  in  the  food  business  go 
chiefly  to  the  gambling  middlemen — the  jobbers. 
This  must  be  changed.  Possibly  the  prices  will  not  be- 
come lower;  but  if  the  method  just  suggested  is  carried 
out,  the  quality  (flavor)  of  the  food  we  eat  will  be 
vastly  improved  and  the  profits  will  go  to  those  who 
deserve  them — the  market  gardeners.  Let  us  do  all  we 
can  to  make  their  work  as  alluring  and  profitable  as 
possible  in  order  to  greatly  increase  their  numbers. 
To  the  lowering  of  the  cost  of  food  we  ourselves 
can  largely  attend  by  stopping  our  sinful  waste  and 
taking  to  heart  the  methods  taught  in  the  preceding 
pages  of  economizing  in  our  food  without  lowering  its 
nutritive  value  or  diminishing  its  pleasurableness. 


XIII 
GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS 

SWEET,    SOUR,    SALT,    AND    BITTER. 

N  the  London  "Zoo"  one  day,  as  we 
were  nearing  the  bear  den,  we  heard  the 
most  heartrending  cries  on  the  part  of 
one  of  its  denizens.  It  sounded  as  if 
some  bruin  were  being  murdered  or 
vivisected.  In  reality,  the  wails  and 
tears  were  all  due  to  the  fact  that  one 
of  the  animals  "wanted  more" — ^more  of  the  jam 
which  an  attendant  was  distributing  to  his  charges  in 
turn  by  the  spoonful.  That  bear  had  a  particularly 
"sweet  tooth";  but  is  not  bruin  proverbial  for  his  love 
of  wild  honey  *?  It  is  a  casus  belli  with  many  a  swarm 
of  bees. 

If  you  wish  to  make  a  horse  love  you,  let  him  take 
cubes  of  sugar  from  the  palm  of  your  hand.     As  for 

559 


56o  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

dogs,  they  are  supposed  to  be  about  as  carnivorous  as 
carnivorous  can  be;  yet  I  have  heard  of  a  dog  who,  for 
months,  daily  brought  a  basket  of  meat  from  the  vil- 
lage butcher  and  never  touched  it;  but  one  morning 
some  horehound  candy  was  put  in  the  basket  and  that 
was  too  much  for  his  integrity;  he  stopped  on  the  way 
and  ate  it  all  up.  I  felt  inclined  to  doubt  that  story 
until  I  found  that  Laddie,  my  own  beautiful  collie, 
invariably  was  much  more  eager  for  sugar  than  for 
meat  (with  the  possible  exception  of  imported  Lyons 
sausage).  Candy  and  sweetened  cream  are  his  ideas  of 
ambrosia  and  nectar. 

To  make  friends  with  cows  and  sheep  you  need  salt. 
With  a  few  handfuls  of  it  in  your  pocket  you  can  soon 
make  them  leave  the  richest  grass  and  come  crowding 
around  you  when  you  take  your  daily  walk  in  the  fields. 
We  ourselves  crave  salt  in  food,  but  we  do  not  lick  it 
eagerly  as  some  domestic  as  well  as  wild  animals  do. 
In  Central  Africa,  however,  where  it  is  a  luxury  hard  to 
get,  men  and  women  devour  it  with  the  same  zest  that 
our  youngsters  show  for  candy. 

So  far  as  I  know,  no  animal  likes  sour  things;  plain 
water  would  be  invariably  preferred  to  lemonade. 
Cows  and  pigs,  to  be  sure,  eagerly  eat  apples,  and  other 
fruits,  and  so  do  horses ;  they  eat  them  though  they  be 
sour;  but  if  you  give  them  a  whole  bushel,  they  pick 
out  the  sweet  ones  first. 

The  liking  for  sour  things  is  a  human  attribute. 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     561 

School  children  are  often  more  eager  for  a  pickle  than 
for  a  stick  of  candy;  and  adults  as  well  as  the  young 
ones  enjoy  tart  or  sub-acid  fruits  of  all  kinds.  What 
could  be  better  than  a  pie  or  a  tart  made  of  green  goose- 
berries or  sour  currants?  I  would  give  all  the  con- 
fectionery and  sweet  cakes  in  the  world  for  a  tree 
of  sour  cherries.  Of  the  delights  of  sour  salads 
I  wrote  at  length  in  the  chapter  on  French  suprem- 
acy. 

Bitter  herbs  are  eaten  sometimes  by  browsing  an- 
imals, but  I  doubt  if  they  would  select  them  by  choice. 
The  liking  for  bitter  foods  and  drinks  is  not  only  a 
human  attribute;  it  is  a  specifically  epicurean  trait. 
How  very  much  better  Scotch  marmalade  made  of  bit- 
ter oranges  is  than  marmalade  made  of  ordinary 
oranges!  Slightly  bitter  also  is  the  best  pomelo. 
Bitter  almond  is  a  favorite  flavoring  for  cakes  and  can- 
dies. The  best  of  all  salads,  escarole  and  the  endive 
tribe  in  general,  are  bitter.  Bottled  "bitters"  are 
widely  used  as  appetizers. 

Physicians  of  all  periods  have  agreed  that  bitter  sub- 
stances increase  the  appetite.  Professor  Pawlow  con- 
siders them  the  strongest  of  all  stimulants  to  a  jaded 
palate.  He  inclines  to  the  belief  that  "bitters  not  only 
act  directly  on  the  gustatory  nerves  in  the  mouth,  but 
that  they  also  act  on  the  mucous  membrane  of  the 
stomach  in  such  a  way  that  sensations  are  generated 
which  contribute  to  the  passionate  craving  for  food." 


562  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

A    COMEDY    OF    ERRORS. 

While  thus  admitting  the  gastronomic  and  thera- 
peutic value  of  bitters,  I  must  nevertheless  call  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  their  allurements,  as  mere  sensa- 
tions of  taste^  are  not  considerable.  We  would  not 
care  so  much  for  Scotch  marmalade  as  we  do  were  it  not 
for  the  pungent  fragrance  of  the  Seville  orange  which 
accompanies  its  bitter  taste ;  or  for  the  bitter  grapefruit 
were  it  not  so  highly  perfumed.  Hops  are  valued  for 
their  tonic  bitter  but  still  more  for  their  agreeable  odor, 
without  which  beer,  for  instance,  is  a  flat  failure.  We 
never  eat  quinine  for  fun,  because  it  has  no  fragrance  to 
modify  its  intense  bitter;  nor,  for  the  same  reason, 
would  we  use  strychnine  as  a  condiment  even  though  it 
were  as  harmless  as  sugar. 

Now,  what  is  true  of  bitter,  is  true  also  of  all  other 
sensations  of  taste — salt,  sour,  and  sweet.  Considered 
as  mere  sensations  of  taste  they  have  no  great  gastro- 
nomic value — not  great  at  any  rate  when  compared 
with  the  sensations  of  smell.  On  this  point  I  need  not 
dwell,  as  I  discussed  it  briefly  in  Chapter  II  under  the 
headings  of  "An  Amazing  Blunder"  and  "A  New 
Psychology  of  Eating,"  in  which  I  pointed  out  that 
there  is  only  one  unvarying  kind  of  sour  and  one  un- 
varying kind  of  sweet  and  that  all  the  varied  and 
countless  pleasures  of  the  table  are  due  chiefly  to  the 
sense  of  smell  which  enables  us  to  enjoy  them  if  we 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     563 

breathe  out  through  the  nose  while  munching  our  food. 

To  this  day  it  seems  almost  incredible  that  it  should 
have  remained  for  me  to  make  this  extremely  important 
discovery;  yet  all  my  researches  have  failed  to  bring 
to  light  a  psychologist  who  anticipated  me.  My  sur- 
prise abated  somewhat  at  the  time  when  the  theory  was 
first  announced  that  mosquitoes  are  responsible  for 
malaria.  Having  just  read  Humboldt's  travels  in 
South  America  and  Stanley's  "Darkest  Africa,"  I  re- 
membered that  both  of  these  writers  had  come  within 
an  inch  of  the  truth,  yet  missed  it  completely.  The 
case  of  Stanley  is  really  comic.  Emin  Pasha  had  in- 
formed him  that  he  "always  took  a  mosquito  curtain 
with  him,  as  he  believed  that  it  was  an  excellent  pro- 
tector against  miasmatic  exhalations  of  the  night." 
Now,  how  in  the  world  could  these  "miasmatic  exhala- 
tions" (which  were  held  responsible  for  malaria) 
have  been  kept  out  by  a  mosquito  net  when,  as 
Stanlev  does  not  fail  to  note,  the  same  air  "enters 
by  the  doors  of  the  house  and  under  the  flaps  and 
through  ventilators  to  poison  the  inmates"? 

Just  as  in  this  case  the  fixed  idea  that  bad  air 
{malaria)  must  be  responsible  for  the  disease  obscured 
the  truth,  so  the  undeserved  homage  bestowed  on  the 
sense  of  taste  blinded  those  who  wrote  on  this  subject, 
including  Brillat-Savarin. 

In  his  "Physiology  of  Taste"  he  has  a  chapter  on  the 
senses  in  which  he  beats  around  the  bush  in  the  most 


564  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

ridiculous  way.  He  knew  that  if  you  have  a  cold,  or 
hold  your  nose  while  eating,  "no  flavor  is  perceived  in 
anything  that  is  swallowed" ;  yet  from  this  he  inferred 
that  "all  sense  of  taste  is  obliterated,"  although  the 
simplest  experiment  would  have  shown  him  that  a  cold 
does  not  affect  the  sensations  of  sweet,  sour,  salt,  bit- 
ter, alkaline,  or  metallic  in  the  least;  and  after  several 
pages  of  argumentation  he  comes  to  the  absurd  conclu- 
sion that  "there  is  no  complete  perception  of  taste 
unless  the  sense  of  smell  .have  a  share  in  the  sensation," 
and  that,  in  fact,  "smell  and  taste  form  only  one  sense, 
having  the  mouth  as  laboratory  with  the  nose  for  fire- 
place or  chimney."  You  might  as  well  say  that  sight 
and  hearing  form  only  one  sense. 

Dr.  Charles  Henry  Pi  esse,  member  of  the  Royal  Col- 
lege of  Surgeons,  is  another  author  who  came  within 
half  an  inch  of  the  truth,  yet  missed  it.  He  wrote  a 
little  volume,  "Olfactics  and  the  Physical  Senses," 
which  is  full  of  interesting  facts  and  suggestions. 
Two  citations,  the  first  from  "The  Art  of  Perfumery," 
written  by  Dr.  Piesse's  father,  the  second  from  "Olfac- 
tics," will  show  "how  warm"  these  two  men  got  in  their 
search,  as  the  children  say  in  their  play. 

To  the  unlearned  nose  all  odors  are  alike ;  but  when  tutored, 
either  for  pleasure  or  profit,  no  member  of  the  body  Is  more 
sensitive.  Wine  merchants,  tea  brokers,  drug  dealers,  tobacco 
importers,  and  many  others,  have  to  go  through  a  regular  educa- 
tional nasal  course.  A  hop  merchant  buries  his  nose  in  a  pocket, 
takes  a  sniff,  and  then  sets  his  price  upon  the  bitter  flower. 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     565 

The  odors  have  to  be  remembered,  and  It  is  noteworthy  here 
to  remark  with  what  persistence  odors  do  fix  themselves  upon 
the  memory;  and  were  it  not  for  this  remembrance  of  an  odor, 
the  merchants  in  the  trades  above  indicated  would  soon  be  at 
fault.  An  experienced  perfumer  will  have  two  hundred  odors 
in  his  laboratory,  and  can  distinguish  every  one  by  name. 

When  the  breath  is  held  the  most  odorous  substances  may  be 
spread  in  the  interior  of  the  nostrils  without  their  perfume  being 
perceived.  This  observation  was  first  made  by  Galen.  It 
has  been  frequently  remarked  that  odors  are  smelt  only  during 
inspiration;  the  same  air,  when  returned  through  the  nostrils, 
always  proving  inodorous.  But  this  is  true  only  when  the  odor 
has  been  admitted  from  without  by  the  nostrils,  for  when  it  is 
admitted  by  the  mouth,  as  in  combination  with  articles  of  nu- 
trition, it  can  be  perceived  during  expiration  through  the  nose. 

Yet  this  man,  who  thus  came  so  near  the  truth, 
missed  it  as  widely  as  all  the  others!  Throughout 
his  books  he  talks  as  if  taste  were  "it."  The  num- 
ber of  "different  tastes,  or  flavors"  is,  "of  course,  un- 
limited," he  says;  whereas,  let  me  say  it  once  more, 
there  are  only  six  tastes :  sweet,  salt,  sour,  bitter,  metal- 
lic and  alkaline.  Again,  he  remarks  that  "the  im- 
portance of  possessing  a  pure  and  cultivated  sense  of 
taste  is  very  great  in  certain  trades  and  professions,  as, 
for  instance,  the  occupation  of  a  wine-taster,  a  tea- 
taster,  a  coffee-taster.  These  persons  are  all  gourmets ; 
the  word  gourmet  signifying  a  taster."  Wrong,  from 
beginning  to  end.  Coffee,  tea,  and  wine  "tasters" — 
the  men  who  sample  these  articles  to  adjudge  their  com- 
mercial  value — are  guided  entirely  by  their  Flavor, 


566  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

that  is,  their  appeal  to  the  sense  of  smell ;  while  epicures 
owe  nine-tenths  of  their  enjoyment  of  food  to  that 
sense  and  only  one-tenth  to  the  sense  of  taste. 

Even  Professor  Dr.  Gustav  Jager,  the  famous  apostle 
of  "all-wool  for  man's  wear,"  missed  the  mark.  He 
wrote  a  book,  "Die  Entdeckung  der  Seele,"  in  which  he 
tried  to  prove  that  smell  is  really  the  most  important  of 
our  senses,  the  olfactory  nerve  being  in  fact  the  seat  of 
the  soul !  Yet  this  ardent  advocate  entirely  failed  to 
see  the  truth  I  have  set  forth  in  this  book — the  fact  that 
to  the  sense  of  smell  we  owe  most  of  the  countless 
pleasures  of  the  table,  with  all  their  important  digestive 
and  hygienic  consequences.  Just  like  all  the  other  mis- 
guided writers  on  this  subject,  he  speaks  of  differences 
in  taste  between  lobster  and  crawfish,  or  between  the 
eggs  of  hens,  ducks,  geese,  and  so  on,  although  it  is  the 
nose  and  not  the  tongue  that  enables  us  to  tell  them 
apart. 

HOW    FLAVOR    DIFFERS    FROM    FRAGRANCE. 

Throughout  this  volume  I  have  used  the  word  Flavor 
as  if  it  were  virtually  synonymous  with  odor,  fragrance, 
aroma.  Strictly  speaking,  it  is  not,  for  taste  usually 
enters  as  an  ingredient;  but  from  a  gastronomic  point 
of  view  the  taste  is  usually  so  subordinate  that  it  is 
almost  negligible.  To  say  it  once  more,  we  hardly 
enjoy  vinegar  unless  it  is  fragrant,  and  while  we  like 
the  taste  of  sugar  we  gladly  pay  from  five  to  thirty 


GASTRONOiMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     567 

times  as  much  for  it  when  it  is  flavored  and  sold  as 
candy. 

In  the  great  Oxford  Dictionary  two  definitions  of  the 
word  flavor  are  given.  It  means,  in  the  best  literary 
usage,  either  a  smell,  odor,  aroma,  pure  and  simple; 
or  it  means  "the  element  in  the  taste  of  a  substance 
which  depends  on  the  cooperation  of  the  sense  of 
smell." 

If  asked  for  my  own  definition  I  should  say  that 
"flavor  is  the  odor  of  a  substance  as  perceived  in  breath- 
ing out  through  the  nose  while  we  are  eating,  and 
usually  accompanied  by  a  sweet,  sour,  salt,  or  bitter 
taste"  This  distinguishes  flavor  from  fragrance, 
which  we  perceive  in  breathing  in  through  the  nose;  as, 
the  fragrance  of  a  rose  or  a  violet — and  this  is  not  ac- 
companied by  a  taste. 

A  strawberry  has  both  fragrance  and  flavor.  Per- 
sons who  cannot  eat  strawberries  may  still  enjoy  their 
fragrance,  which  is  subtler  and  more  delicious  than  the 
flavor.  We  must  try  to  overcome  the  foolish  prejudice 
against  "smelling  at  things"  (apples,  oranges,  etc.)  at 
table;  for  the  fragrance  of  foods  also  stimulates  the 
appetite  and  thus  helps  digestion.  When  quinces  or 
"pomegranates"  (melon  gourds)  are  ripe  I  often  carry 
one  in  my  pocket,  so  that  I  may  enjoy  its  exquisite  and 
beneficial  fragrance  after  meals. 

Cantaloupes,  pineapples,  pomelos  (grapefruit),  ripe 
peaches,  and  some  apples  and  plums  are  fruits  with  a 


568  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

fragrance  which  is  even  more  delicious  than  their  flavor. 
In  other  cases — ^particularly  cherries  and  pears — the 
flavor  is  much  more  important;  and  in  some  instances 
the  fragrance  is  positively  disagreeable  while  the  flavor 
is  exquisite. 

This  is  true  of  the  durlon.  Dr.  Paludanus  informs 
us  that  "to  those  not  used  to  it,  it  seems  at  first  to  smell 
like  rotten  onions,  but  immediately  they  have  tasted  it 
they  prefer  it  to  all  other  food."  The  great  naturalist, 
Alfred  Russell  Wallace,  says  of  it  in  his  great  work  on 
the  Malayan  Archipelago  that  "the  more  you  eat  of  it 
the  less  you  feel  inclined  to  stop.  In  fact,  to  eat 
durions  is  a  rare  sensation,  worth  a  voyage  to  the  East 
to  experience." 

I  remember  reading  in  the  London  "Telegraph," 
many  years  ago,  an  editorial,  presumably  by  Sir  Edwin 
Arnold,  entitled  "The  King  Is  Eating  Durions."  It 
described  His  Majesty  as  being  so  completely  absorbed 
in  this  task  that  his  subjects  had  orders,  on  penalty  of 
death,  not  to  disturb  him  even  if  war  should  suddenly 
be  declared.  The  natives  give  it  honorable  titles,  exalt 
it,  make  verses  on  it.  Cannot  our  Bureau  of  Plant  In- 
dustry acclimate  this  gastronomic  marvel  somewhere 
within  hailing  distance*? 

Tobacco  is  one  of  those  things  the  fragrance  of  which 
is  more  agreeable  than  the  flavor.  The  time  will  come 
when  smoking  will  be  given  up  and  tobacco  simply 
burnt,  like  incense.     That  will  make  it  harmless,  al- 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     569 

though  it  will  still  be  as  offensive  to  some  as  to  others 
it  is  delightful. 

IMPORTANT    FUNCTIONS    OF    THE    NOSE. 

1.  "The  fate  of  innumerable  girls  has  been  decided 
by  a  slight  upward  or  downward  curvature  of  the 
nose,"  wrote  Schopenhauer;  and  Pascal  declared  that 
if  Cleopatra's  nose  had  been  but  a  trifle  larger  the 
whole  political  geography  of  this  planet  might  have 
been  different.  Owing  to  the  fact  that  the  nasal  organ 
occupies  the  most  prominent  part  of  the  face,  Professor 
Kollmann  remarks  that  "the  partial  or  complete  loss  of 
the  nose  causes  a  greater  disfigurement  than  a  much 
greater  fault  of  configuration  in  any  other  part  of  the 
face."  Of  all  our  features  the  nose  has  always  been 
considered  the  most  aristocratic,  as  well  as  an  impor- 
tant condition  of  beauty. 

2.  No  less  important  is  the  nose  as  a  condition  of 
beautiful  speech  and  song.  Jean  de  Reszke,  the  great- 
est tenor  and  vocal  teacher  of  our  time,  goes  so  far  as  to 
say  that  "la  grande  question  du  chant  devient  une 
question  du  nez."  Unless  the  stream  of  tone,  when  we 
speak  or  sing,  goes  through  the  nose  it  lacks  beauty  and 
resonance;  yet  with  consistent  stupidity  we  have  be- 
stowed the  word  "nasal"  on  the  sounds  produced  when 
the  nose  is  not  used  as  a  resonator  or  "sounding  board !" 
To  fully  comprehend  the  important  musico-philolog- 
ical  function  of  the  nose  in  giving  beauty  and  variety 


570  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

to  tones,  read  Chapter  III  of  Prof.  G.  H.  Meyer's 
"The  Organs  of  Speech." 

3.  The  nose  is  a  sort  of  funnel  for  warming  the  air 
before  it  enters  the  sensitive  lungs. 

4.  It  is,  furthermore,  an  apparatus  for  filtering  the 
air  on  its  way  to  the  lungs,  which  is  done  with  the  aid 
of  fine  hairs  and  cilia  in  the  nostrils.  Persons  who 
breathe  through  the  mouth  have  at  the  age  of  thirty  a 
gramme  of  dust  in  their  lungs  which  they  can  never 
get  rid  of.  Mouth-breathing  is  a  cause  of  catarrh,  of 
unrefreshing  sleep,  of  snoring.  Moreover,  in  the 
words  of  Dr.  T.  R.  French,  "the  habit  of  breathing 
through  the  mouth  interferes  with  general  nutrition. 
The  subjects  of  this  habit  are  usually  anemic,  spare  and 
dyspeptic." 

5.  The  nose  is  a  sentinel,  warning  us  not  to  tarry 
where  the  air  is  malodorous  and  dangerous  to  health. 

6.  Lavender  water,  eau-de-Cologne,  attar  of  roses, 
and  other  perfumes  are,  as  everybody  knows,  effective 
in  curing  headaches  and  resting  the  tired  mind.  The 
"Scotsman"  tells  an  interesting  story  of  Sir  William 
Temple's  visit  to  the  India  House  of  Amsterdam  where 
he  and  his  companions  were  exalted  by  the  tonic  effect 
of  the  spices  and  aromas  about  them.  John  Evelyn 
proposed  to  make  London  the  healthiest  and  happiest 
city  in  Christendom  by  planting  all  around  it  hedgerows 
of  sweetbriar,  rosemary,  jasmine,  etc.  The  feeling  of 
relief  which  delights  us  when  we  leave  the  city  and  step 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     571 

out  of  the  railway  car  comes  from  the  natural  fragrance 
of  the  trees,  herbs,  and  flowers.  This  fragrance  makes 
us  breathe  deeply,  and  deep  breathing  is  the  greatest  of 
all  tonics,  as  well  as  a  preventive  of  colds  and  consump- 
tion. A  gardener  has  written  of  the  "thrilling"  fra- 
grance of  sweet  peas,  and  it  is  not  too  strong  a  word ;  I 
myself  have  often  been  thrilled  by  their  fragrance,  or 
that  of  lilies,  pinks,  or  hyacinths  wafted  across  the  gar- 
den like  sweet  concords  of  music. 

About  ten  million  dollars  a  year  is  the  amount  spent 
in  the  United  States  on  perfumery.  The  best  perfumes 
are  still,  and  always  will  be,  the  natural  ones,  made  in 
the  Riviera  and  Roumania.  Grasse,  in  southern 
France,  alone  uses  1,200  tons  of  roses,  200  tons  of  jas- 
mine blossoms,  and  nearly  as  many  tons  of  violets  every 
year.  Of  chemical  imitations  of  the  natural  perfumes 
Germany  produces  annually  about  $12,000,000  worth. 
When  we  try  to  guess  the  amount  of  perfumery  the 
world  needs  for  toilet  powders,  sachets,  dentifrices,  and 
soaps,  we  realize  what  an  important  part  the  nose  plays 
in  commerce.  The  nation's  candy  bill  exceeds  a  hun- 
dred million  dollars  a  year;  and  candy  is  perfumed 
sugar.  The  value  of  the  world's  annual  tobacco  crop 
is  about  $200,000,000,  and  the  appeal  of  tobacco  is, 
of  course,  chiefly  to  the  nose.  Some  dolt  wrote,  many 
years  ago,  that  if  you  blindfold  a  smoker  he  cannot 
tell  the  difference  between  good  and  bad  tobacco.  He 
was  evidently  anosmic — one  of  a  considerable  number 


572  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

of  persons  whose  sense  of  smell  is  not  developed.  To 
normal  smokers  the  value  of  a  cigar  lies  in  its  fragrance, 
and  it  is  their  superior  fragrance  that  makes  the  product 
of  Cuba  the  most  costly  of  all  cigars. 

7.  The  seventh  and  most  important  function  of  the 
nose  is  the  one  which — mirahile  dictu — it  remained  for 
me  to  discover — the  function  of  perceiving  and  enjoy- 
ing the  countless  varieties  of  flavor  that  are  developed 
in  the  food  we  eat.  To  what  I  have  already  said  in 
proof  of  this  assertion  let  me  add  that  the  nerves  of 
taste  are  affected  by  liquids,  and  those  of  smell  by  gases ; 
and  the  flavored  air  we  breathe  out  while  eating  is  cer- 
tainly not  liquid! 

EDUCATING    THE    SENSE    OF    SMELL. 

Dr.  Piesse  errs  in  saying  that  the  sense  of  taste  can 
and  should  be  educated.  It  needs  no  educating;  sweet 
is  distinguished  from  sour,  salt  and  bitter  from  the 
earliest  infancy,  and  that  is  all  there  is  to  it. 

The  sense  of  smell,  on  the  other  hand,  can  and 
should  be  educated  systematically.  Kant's  reason  for 
saying  that  it  is  not  worth  cultivating  was  that,  in  pop- 
ulous regions,  particularly,  there  are  more  disagreeable 
than  agreeable  odors.  He  might  as  well  have  advised 
against  educating  the  eyes  and  the  ears  because  in  our 
cities  there  are  more  offensive  sights  and  sounds  than 
agreeable  ones.  An  educated  sense  of  smell  objects  to 
malodorous  surroundings  and  therefore  prompts  sani- 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     573 

tary  reforms.  Much  has  been  done  in  this  direction 
since  the  days  of  Kant.  The  next  reform  will  be  to 
absolutely  demand  clean,  sweet  air  in  schools,  theaters, 
and  concert  halls. 

The  principal  reason  for  educating  the  sense  of  smell 
is  to  protect  us  against  the  danger  of  eating  spoiled 
food,  and  to  enable  us  thoroughly  to  enjoy  the  count- 
less pleasures  of  the  table — dwelt  on  in  this  book — on 
which  a  good  appetite  depends.  The  significance  of 
this  was  understood  by  Shakespeare  when  he  wrote: 

Now  good  digestion  wait  on  appetite 
And  health  on  both. 

Ants  are  the  most  intelligent  of  all  insects.  Their 
antennae  are  organs  of  smell  and  so  much  is  their  world 
a  world  of  odors  that,  as  Sir  John  Lubbock  ascertained, 
an  ant  accidentally  born  without  antennse  seemed  to  be 
as  helpless  as  a  blind  person  among  ourselves.  Many 
mammals  are  greatly  dependent  on  this  sense,  and  there 
was  a  time  when  a  large  part  of  the  human  brain  was 
assigned  to  its  perceptions.  More  and  more  the  im- 
pressions of  sight  gained  on  it.  The  process  has  gone 
too  far;  we  must  once  more  strengthen  and  develop  our 
olfactory  nerves  and  encourage  the  expansion  of  the 
olfactory  region  in  the  brain. 

The  way  to  do  it  has  been  dwelt  on  repeatedly  in  the 
preceding  pages.  I  have  taught  several  persons  who 
were  partly  anosmic  to  learn  after  a  short  time  to  dis- 


574  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

tinguish  between  different  foods  that  had  previously 
"tasted"  alike  to  them;  they  simply  followed  my  ad- 
vice of  breathing  out  slowly  and  consciously  through 
the  nose  while  eating.  Keep  those  two  words — ^partic- 
ularly co7isciously — in  mind.  Never  eat  in  an  absent- 
minded  way;  and  if  you  are  a  host  or  a  hostess,  please 
do  not  tell  your  guest  interesting  stories  at  the  moment 
when  he  is  trying  to  do  justice  to  the  good  things  you 
have  placed  before  him ! 

Children  should  be  told  every  time  they  bolt  their 
food  or  candy  that  the  pleasure  of  eating  lies  not  in  the 
swallowing  of  it,  but  in  keeping  it  in  the  mouth  as  long 
as  possible  and  breathing  out  through  the  nose.  That 
will  make  epicures  of  them,  able  to  tell  good  food  from 
bad  and  thus  escape  many  an  illness. 

How  acute  the  sense  of  smell  can  be  made  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  it  will  perceive  and  distinguish  the 
1,300,000th  part  of  a  grain  of  attar  of  roses.  It  is  said 
that  the  inmates  of  an  asylum  for  the  blind,  whose 
other  senses  are  sharpened  by  the  loss  of  sight,  can  tell 
on  entering  a  dining-room  what  viands  are  on  the  table. 

De  gustihus  non  est  disputandufn.  True;  we  are  all 
entitled  to  our  likes  and  dislikes;  but  many  "differences 
of  taste"  are  simply  differences  in  development  and 
acuteness  of  the  sense  of  smell.  To  those  in  whom  this 
sense  is  blunted,  sweet  (unsalted)  butter  may  seem 
insipid;  but  should  they  maintain  that  it  is  insipid? 

To  Turner  a  man  once  said  he  could  not  see  in  nature 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     575 

such  colors  as  he  used  on  his  canvases.  The  great 
painter  promptly  replied:  "Don't  you  wish  you 
could?' 

Epicures  are  usually  bom  with  a  keen  sense  of  smell. 
Once,  in  crossing  a  bleak  pass  in  the  Alps,  I  said  to  my 
companion :  "I  smell  an  orchid !"  After  considerable 
search  we  found  it — a  tiny  blossom — some  ten  feet 
from  the  road.  That  orchid  explains  why  I  have  writ- 
ten this  book. 

COFFEE,    TEA,    AND    TEMPERANCE. 

A  general  educating  of  the  sense  of  smell  may  not 
solve  the  temperance  problem,  but  it  will  be  a  great 
help. 

It  would  be  a  blessing  if  every  liquor  saloon  in  the 
country  could  be  closed.  Most  of  the  whiskey  and 
other  strong  drink  sold — at  an  enormous  profit — in 
these  places  is  adulterated  in  ways  which  often  make  it 
infinitely  more  harmful  than  the  pure  article  would  be, 
under  any  circumstances.  But  the  unadulterated  is  an 
evil,  too,  because  it  is  usually  drunk  in  excess. 

It  has  been  said  of  the  native  African  that  he  wants 
something  with  a  "bite"  in  it  and  is  not  satisfied  with 
a  drink  that  does  not  go  down  his  throat  "like  a  torch- 
light procession."  But  the  African  is  not  alone  in  this 
peculiarity.  There  are  many  thousands  of  whites  who 
want  their  whiskey  or  rum  "fiery"  above  all  things; 
and  they  want  it  that  way  because  their  sense  of  smell 


576  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

is  not  educated  to  appreciate  the  higher  qualities  of 
liquors — their  fragrance,  or  "bouquet." 

"It  is  a  fact,"  as  a  well-known  mixer  of  fancy  drinks 
once  remarked,  "that  there  are  very  few  good  judges  of 
liquor.  It  is  a  very  old  chestnut  to  set  out  whiskey 
when  brandy  has  been  called  for,  and  not  one  in  ten 
can  tell  the  difference.  There  are  few  people  who  can 
distinguish  between  high  and  low  priced  wines." 

The  difference  between  the  best  wines  and  the  poor- 
est lies  chiefly  in  this,  that  the  best  have  a  maximum  of 
bouquet  and  a  minimum  of  alcohol.  The  bouquet  is 
exhilarating,  like  the  alcohol,  yet  is  perfectly  harmless. 
On  the  bouquet  depends  the  commercial  as  well  as  the 
gastronomic  value  of  wines  almost  entirely.  Now, 
while  some  persons  who  are  addicted  to  strong  drink 
may  be  hopeless  cases,  there  are  thousands  who  might 
be  saved  by  teaching  them  that  by  educating  their  sense 
of  smell  to  the  appreciation  of  bouquet  they  can  get 
infinitely  more  pleasure  from  a  refined  sort  of  in- 
dulgence than  from  the  bestial  alcoholic  intoxication 
which  is  followed  by  nausea,  headache,  by  nights  and 
days  of  misery,  by  poverty  and  deadly  diseases. 

Drunkenness  and  gluttony  are  no  longer  respectable, 
or  even  semi-respectable,  and  further  progress  in  the 
same  direction  may  be  hoped  for  through  efforts  at 
reform  along  the  lines  I  have  indicated.  A  true  epi- 
cure would  no  more  dull  the  edge  of  his  appetite  for 
future  pleasures  of  the  table  by  over-indulgence  in  food 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     577 

or  drink  than  a  barber  would  think  of  whittling  kin- 
dling wood  with  his  razor. 

Whiskey  drinkers  are  far  from  being  the  only  topers. 
There  are  also  a  great  many  tea  and  coffee  topers.  A 
writer  in  the  "Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Associ- 
ation" describes  the  case  of  a  woman,  a  member  of  the 
Temperance  Union  in  her  town,  who  was  "a  coffee 
drunkard,"  having  been  living  for  months  on  little  be- 
side black  coffee,  till  she  was  a  wreck.  Such  cases  are 
common;  they  have  led  to  the  manufacture  on  a  large 
scale  of  diverse  substitutes  for  coffee,  some  of  which  are 
not  at  all  bad  if  taken  with  sugar  and  cream. 

Some  relief  is  also  coming  through  the  increased  de- 
mand for  cocoa,  which  has  the  advantage  over  tea  and 
coffee  of  being  a  real  food.  In  the  period  from  1888  to 
1911  imports  of  cocoa  into  the  United  States  increased 
from  6,600,000  pounds  to  134,000,000,  while  those  of 
coffee  increased  only  from  404,000,000  to  800,000,000 
pounds,  and  those  of  tea  from  68,000,000  to  104,- 
000,000  pounds. 

That  tea  is  the  worst  enemy  of  the  Irish  peasantry 
was  the  burden  of  a  blue  book  issued  a  few  years  ago 
by  the  Inspectors  of  Irish  schools.  "The  tea  is  so  pre- 
pared for  use  that  the  liquid,  when  drunk,  has  the  prop- 
erties of  a  slow  poison.  The  teapot  stewing  on  the 
hearth  all  day  long  is  kept  literally  on  tap;  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family,  young  as  well  as  old,  resorting  to  it 
at  discretion." 


It 


578  FOOD    AND    FLAVOR 

It  is  not  only  among  the  peasantry  and  the  city  slums 
that    improperly    made    tea    does    its    deadly    work. 

m  \  p,  'ft  u 

t  f  flli 

Mi 


Javanese  Tea-picker   and   Porter 

Among  the  well-to-do,  in  all  countries,  it  is  far  from 
being  in  all  cases,  as  it  is  supposed  to  be,  "the  cup  which 
cheers  but  not  inebriates/*  The  strong  cofFee-colored 
four-o'clock  tea  served  in  English  and  American  homes 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     579 

is  a  gastronomic  atrocity ;  it  is  bad  for  heart,  nerves,  and 
stomach.  In  the  United  States,  in  nine  cases  out  of 
ten,  the  tea  served  is  an  inky  fluid,  bitter  as  gall,  and 
devoid  of  fragrance. 

When  our  Government  forbade  the  importation  of 
artificially  colored  teas.  Consul  West  wrote  from  Japan 
that  the  planters  were  induced  by  this  measure  to 
"make  greater  efforts  in  future  to  improve  the  -flavor 
rather  than  the  color  and  the  appearance"  of  the  tea. 

The  Flavor  is,  indeed,  the  one  thing  to  be  considered 
in  raising  high-class  tea;  also,  in  preparing  it.  The  art 
of  brewing  a  good  cup  of  tea  consists  in  making  it  in 
such  a  way  as  to  secure  a  maximum  of  fragrance  and  a 
minimum  of  the  tannin,  which  is  bad  for  the  digestion, 
and  the  theine,  which  is  a  nerve  poison.  The  rules  for 
making  tea  may  be  found  in  any  good  cook  book.  The 
main  points  are  that  the  water  should  never  remain  on 
the  leaves  more  than  from  three  to  five  minutes,  and 
that  the  teapot  should  be  thoroughly  heated  because  it 
is  only  at  the  boiling  point  that  some  of  the  volatile 
properties  of  the  leaves,  on  which  the  aroma  depends, 
can  be  properly  extracted.  A  little  sugar  to  sweeten 
it  is  permissible;  it  does  not  alter  the  flavor.  Milk  or 
cream  do;  wherefore  tea-drinkers  who  are  epicures  and 
like  to  enjoy  the  unique  fragrance  of  different  kinds  of 
tea,  reject  them. 

The  commercial  and  gastronomic  value  of  coffee  is 
determined  by  the  amount  of  the  aromatic  volatile  oil 


58o  FOOD   AND    FLAVOR 

which  develops  in  the  process  of  roasting.  This  fra- 
grant oil  is  called  caffeone.  But  coffee  also  has  another 
active  principle,  an  alkaloid  called  caffeine,  which  has 
a  strong  effect  on  the  vascular  and  nervous  systems  and 
is  used  as  a  medicine.  Now,  the  art  of  making  good 
coffee  consists  in  eliminating,  as  far  as  possible,  the 
effects  of  the  caffeine  while  developing  those  of  the 
caffeone.  To  the  caffeine  are  due  the  wakefulness  and 
digestive  disturbances  caused  by  coffee;  while  the  fla- 
vorsome  caffeone  produces  the  harmless  exhilarating 
effects. 

Coffee-roasting  is  a  science  which  every  housewife 
should  study  and  practise;  its  neglect  accounts  for  the 
fact  that  one  so  seldom  gets  a  fragrant  cup  of  coffee. 
The  grinding  should  be  done  just  before  the  coffee  is 
prepared,  and  it  should  be  drunk  at  once.  Families 
having  plenty  of  storage  room  should  buy  coffee  by 
wholesale  as  it  improves  with  age  and  yields  a  more 
mellow  beverage.  Dealers  do  not  favor  this  storing 
because  the  beans  lose  weight  thereby.  Wash  the 
beans  before  roasting  them,  and  you  will  have  the 
material  for  brewing  a  good  cup  of  coffee. 

An  effort  is  being  made  in  Europe  to  substitute  for 
coffee  and  tea  a  beverage  which,  while  having  their  re- 
freshing effect,  contains  so  small  a  proportion  of  the 
alkaloid  substance  as  to  be  comparatively  harmless, 
namely  mate.  In  Argentina  the  use  of  the  mate  leaf 
has  increased  enormously  in  recent  years,  the  annual 


GASTRONOMIC  VALUE  OF  ODORS     581 

consumption  averaging  nearly  twenty  pounds  per  per- 
son, and  in  Paraguay  it  is  even  as  high  as  twenty-nine 
pounds  per  inhabitant.  North  Americans  and  Euro- 
peans have  taken  to  it  much  more  slowly,  owing,  it  is 
said,  to  the  crude  way  of  preparing  the  leaves — the  dry- 
ing of  them  over  an  open  fire,  which  gives  them  a 
smoky  flavor.  But  it  is  claimed  that  superior  methods 
of  preparation  will  make  mate  a  powerful  rival  of  cof- 
fee and  tea,  all  the  more  as  it  is  much  cheaper.  A 
pound  of  it  makes  five  times  as  many  cups  as  a  pound 
of  coffee;  and,  unlike  tea  leaves,  the  mate  leaves  can  be 
used  for  a  second  infusion  without  impairment  of  the 
quality. 

In  beverages,  as  in  foods.  Flavor  is  the  decisive  fac- 
tor. The  natural  flavor  of  mate  seems  to  be  as  agree- 
able as  that  of  tea  or  coffee,  but  it  is  apt  to  be  marred 
by  the  suggestion  of  smoke  just  referred  to.  If  this 
can  be  eliminated,  and  if  it  is  true  that  mate,  though 
containing  less  caffeine  than  either  tea  or  coffee,  is 
even  more  stimulating  and  sustaining,  then  "Para- 
guay tea"  seems  destined  to  be  the  domestic  beverage 
of  the  future. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Adulterated  and  denatured 
foods,  14-39,  40,  66-116, 
351,  441,  528. 

Alaskan  berries,   546. 

Alcoholic  drinks,  575. 

Alligator  pears,  240. 

Allyn,  L.  B.,  528. 

America,  Gastronomic:  spe- 
cialties, 3;  traditions,  4; 
missionaries,  5 ;  most  impor- 
tant problem,  42;  progress, 
181;  cooking  in  schools, 
182;  electric,  on  battleships, 
201;    fat    in    diet,    224;    in 


oysters  spoiled,  86;  dyed 
meats  and  fish,  103;  butter, 
105  ;  unwilling  to  take  pains, 
107 ;  vegetables,  badly 
cooked,  124;  use  of  condi- 
ments, 143;  indifference  to 
superior  cooking,  164; 
wasted  food  and  flavors, 
211;  poultry  for  eggs  only, 
223  ;  dissonant  salads,  243  ; 
bad  influence  on  Paris,  259 ; 
bread,  288;  cheese,  304; 
frozen  fish,  362;  slaughter 
of  game,  366;  prejudice 
against  mutton,  408;  bacon, 
410. 


Paris,    258;    sausages,    348;  Appendicitis,   51. 

fruit,  432;  breakfasts,  440;  Appetite,     and     gastric    juice, 
chapter    XI;    corn,    sweet,  55,  99;  for  girls,  56,   179; 

and  corn  bread,  451;  grid-  cheese    as    appetizer,     303; 

die  cakes  and  maple  syrup,  Shakespeare  on,  573. 

459;  pies,  466;  cranberries,  Apples,  468,  496,  518,  538. 

471 ;     turkeys     and     game,  Artichokes,   French,   238. 

473;    game,    478;    seafood,  Austria,    374,    375,    381    (see 
480;  New  York  lunch  bill  Germany), 

of    fare,    484;    fishes,    489; 
vegetables    gaining   ground,  B 

490;    fruit    eaters   paradise, 

496;   Burbank's  new  fruits  Bacon,  66,  97,  232,  409,  549. 

and  vegetables,  509.  Bailey,  L.  H.,  491,  498,  501, 
America,    Ungastronomic :    3-  510. 

39;  causes,  11;  quick-lunch.  Bakers,  291,  373. 

61;  denatured  food,  66-116;  Bakewell,  R.  G.,  400. 

cold-storage     poultry,      69;  Baltimore,  549. 

585 


586  INDEX 

Bananas,  433,  539. 

Beecher,   Henry  Ward,  468. 

Beef:  embalmed,  15;  extracts, 
123;  roast,  130;  fresh  or 
chilled  vs.  frozen,  401. 

Beer  and  Brewers,  35. 

Benzoate  of  soda,  31. 

Berlin,  89,  342,  356,  359,  37 1, 
381. 

Berries,  435,  5i6,  546. 

Beverages,   575-581. 

Billingsgate  fish  market,  424. 

Birds,  in  Italy,  334  (see 
game). 

Bismark,  351. 

Bitter  (see  taste). 

Boar,  wild,  82. 

Bones,  for  soup,  214. 

Borax,  25. 

Boston,   193,  472,  491. 

Boys  as  cooks,   173. 

Brains,   fried,   318,  421. 

Bread:  Boston  brown,  49; 
American,  67,  287 ;  salt  in, 
142 ;  French,  285 ;  crust  vs. 
crumb,  286;  toasted,  290; 
corn,  457;  the  diabolical 
degerminator,  459 ;  Ger- 
man and  Austrian,  373. 

Bresse,  poulet  de,  69,  220. 

Brillat-Savarin,  61,  219,  343, 

474,  563. 

Broiling,   129. 

Bryce,  A.,  290. 

Buckwheat  cakes,  460. 

Burbank,  Luther,  on  educat- 
ing escarole,  235 ;  arti- 
chokes, 239 ;  frost-proof 
apple  blossoms,  493;  genius 
and  advantages,  509;  men- 
tal pattern,  511;  new 
fruits    and    improved    vege- 


tables, 512-521;  corn,  514 
nuts,     517;     grapes,     518 
enemies,   518;   cactus,   519 
garden,      520;     commercial 
value  of  flavor,   522 ;  com- 
bines   flavor    with    beauty, 
527;    imparting    a    pineap- 
ple flavor,  534. 

Burpee,  W.  A.,  233,  234, 
455. 

Butter:  American,  105; 
sweet  vs.  salt,  112;  how 
the  best  is  made,  292; 
sweet  vs.  sour  cream,  294, 
387;  fishy  flavor  in,  298; 
versus  mutton  fat,  405  ;  arti- 
ficially colored,  525 ;  spoiled 
by  strong  feed,  548. 


Cactus,  thornless,  519. 

California,  432,  513,  5^5, 
531,  536,  555. 

Campbell,  Dr.  H.,  46,  49,  287 

Canada,  410,  481,  555. 

Candy,   21,   33,  62,   544. 

Careme,   160   163,  218,  378. 

Casserole   cooking,    148-9 

Cassidy,  H.  P.,  33,  38,  67. 

Caviare,  257,  502. 

Celery,  494. 

Cereals,    141,   262. 

Chafing  dish  cooking,  150. 

Cheese:  with  salad,  243;  as 
an  appetizer,  303 ;  Ameri- 
can, 304;  various  European 
countries,  305 ;  French, 
306;  cooked  in  place  of 
meat,  328;  German,  Swiss 
and  Dutch,  385;  English, 
446. 


INDEX 


587 


Cherries,  435. 

Chicago,  172,  182,  200,  202, 
362. 

Chickens    (see  poultry). 

Child,  Theodore,   147,   199. 

China,  intensive  farming,  556. 

City-bred  people,  easily  fooled, 
526. 

Clark,   Mrs.  Champ,   168. 

Cocoa,  577. 

Codfish,  flavor  of,  489. 

Coffee,  575. 

Cold  storage,  69,  72,  83-86, 
538. 

Commercial  Value  of  Flavor: 
smoked  hams  and  bacon, 
104,  414;  sweet  butter, 
113,  302;  profitable  chick- 
ens, 220;  sausages,  349; 
fish  ponds,  360;  best  cheese 
the  most  profitable,  387, 
393  >  consumers  and  chilled 
meat,  402 ;  demand  for  good 
poultry,  423;  cakes,  443; 
maple  syrup,  463;  turkeys, 
476;  Burbank  on,  522; 
Chapter  XII;  flavor  decides 
permanence,  522 ;  natural 
butter,  525  where  pure  food 
pays  best,  529;  opportunities 
in  pineapples,  532;  tree-rip- 
ened peaches,  536;  fortunes 
from  bananas  and  oranges, 
539;  melons  and  honey, 
542;  women  and  local 
flavor,  545 ;  feeding  flavor 
into  food,  546;  doubling 
farmyard  profits,  552. 

Condiments,  28,  124,  140, 
142,  354,  448,  469. 

Cook  books  146. 

Cooking:  "plain,"   11;  science 


of  savory,  117;  flavor  as 
guiding  principle,  119;  main 
object  of,  121;  soup,  122; 
boiling,  122;  vegetables, 
125;  steaming,  129;  broil- 
ing, 129;  roasting,  130; 
gravy,  130;  frying,  132; 
combining  meat  and  vege- 
table flavors,  134;  stewing, 
134;  cook  books,  146;  pa- 
per-bag, 148;  casserole, 
149;  a  noble  art,  152;  way 
to  a  man's  heart,  153;  vs. 
divorce,  155 ;  factory  and 
shop  girls,  156;  royalty  in 
the  kitchen,  158;  American 
society  women  as  cooks, 
168;  does  it  pay?  169,  173; 
future  of,  171 ;  school  girls 
like  it,  171;  by  boys  and 
soldiers,  173;  traveling 
schools,  176;  in  English 
schools,  177;  in  American, 
181;  fascination  of,  184; 
lessons  and  the  farm,  186; 
economics,  190;  fireless 
cookers,  191 ;  community 
kitchens,  197;  electric,  200; 
an  exact  science,  204. 

Cooks:  social  caste  of,  154; 
improved  by  praise,  165; 
earn  more  than  teachers, 
doctors,  and  clergymen, 
169;  boys  and  soldiers  as, 
173;  divine  beings,  310. 

Copenhagen,   355. 

Corn,  sweet,  and  corn  bread, 
451  (see  bread);  Bur- 
bank's   improved,   514. 

Covent   Garden   market,   429. 

Crab-apples,  500. 

Cranberries,  371,  471. 


588 


INDEX 


Crawfish,  371,  483. 

Cream,     sweet    or    sour,     for 

butter,  294,  387;  in  cheese, 

388. 

D 

Darwin,  61,  191. 
Dates,  506. 

Dealers,  pennywise,  390,  532. 
Deer,  366;  farming,  479. 
Delicatessen  stores,  341. 
Denatured  foods,  66-116. 
Denniark,  176. 
De  Reszke,  Jean,  569. 
Dickens,  4. 
Dish-washing,    157. 
Domestic    science,    in    schools, 
181;  and   farm  work,    186. 
Ducks,  canvasback,  549. 
Dumas,  A.,  212,  214. 
Drunkenness,   576. 
Dutch  cheese,  390. 


Eating:  a  new  psychology  of, 
61 ;  teaching  the  art  of,  in 
schools,  187;  talking  about, 
340;  with  the  eyes,  524. 

Eggs,  547,  566. 

Electric  cooking,  200. 

Eliot,  C.  W.,  42. 

Ellwanger,  146,  216,  373. 

England:  inns  and  steamers, 
4;  sauces  and  meats,  145; 
cook  books,  147;  royalty  in 
the  kitchen,  158;  cooking 
lessons  for  men,  173;  cook- 
ing in  schools,  177;  electric 
cooking,  201 ;  need  of  va- 
riety, 207 ;  wastefulness, 
211;  poultry,  221;  market 
gardens,    279 ;    mushrooms. 


281 ;  sardines,  315 ;  beef 
dripping,  318;  monotony 
in  diet,  395 ;  gluttony,  397  ; 
roast  beef,  399;  cattle- 
breeders,  400 ;  Southdown 
mutton,  403;  Wiltshire  ba- 
con, 409;  grouse,  421 ;  mar- 
kets, 423,  429;  fish  and  oys- 
ters, 423;  vegetables,  430; 
fruit,  432;  berries,  435; 
marmalades,  jams,  437; 
breakfasts,  440 ;  special 
dishes,  442;  plum  pudding, 
443;  cheese,  446;  abuse  of 
condiments,  448;  pie,  466; 
tea,    577. 

Epicurism,  53,    189,  576. 

Escarole,  232. 

Eyes,  eating  with  the,  524. 


Factory  and  shop  girls,  156, 
183. 

Fairchild,  D.,  68,  506. 

Farmers,  hints  for  (see  gov- 
ernmental gastronomy,  and 
commercial  value  of  flavor). 

Farming,  intensive  will  solve 
food  problem,  553-8. 

Fat,  importance  of,  in  diet, 
224;  how  digested,  225. 

Fireless  cookers,  151,  172, 
191. 

Fish:  dyed,  66;  storage,  67; 
smoked,  103,  344,  427;  in 
Paris  market,  275 ;  fried,  in 
Italy,  316;  live,  brought  to 
kitchen,  355 ;  ponds,  in  Ger- 
many, 360;  frozen,  361;  in 
London  market,  423 ;  sole, 
426;  American,  489. 


INDEX 


589 


Flavor:  superlative  importance 
of,  40-64;  helps  the  stom- 
ach, 53 ;  creates  an  appetite, 
56;  why  we  eat  chicken, 
79;  in  butter,  105;  guid- 
ing principle  in  cooking, 
119;  chief  value  of  veg- 
etables, 124;  extending  the 
flavor  of  meat,  134;  from 
cheap  cuts  of  meat,  137; 
condiments,  143;  art  of 
varying,  153;  test,  vs.  veg- 
etarianism, 142;  fat,  a 
source  of,  388;  in  British 
meat,  399;  little,  in  frozen 
meat,  402,  or  fish,  360; 
in  codfish,  489,  local,  499; 
decides  value,  522;  Bur- 
bank  on,  522;  what  we 
spend  most  money  on,  524; 
in  nuts,  526;  farmers  and 
city  greenhorns,  526;  va- 
riety in,  535;  fruit  and  cold 
storage,  539;  in  bananas 
and  oranges,  540;  in  melons 
and  honey,  543 ;  extracts, 
544;  value  of  local,  545; 
feeding  it  into  food,  546; 
how  it  differs  from  frag- 
rance, 566;  an  aid  to  tem- 
perance, 575;  "bouquet," 
576. 

Fletcher  and  Fletcherizing, 
11-53,   63,   227. 

Flour,  320,  373. 

Food  and  Drugs  Act,  31. 

Food  problem  solved  by  in- 
tensive farming,  554-8. 

Food,  soft,  50;  adulterated, 
14-39;  denatured,  65-116; 
raw,  118;  enjoyable  plain, 
52;    importance    of   variety, 


206 ;  cheap  nourishment, 
190;  (see  meats,  vegetables, 
fruits,  cooking,  pure  food, 
etc.)  ;    why    cost    increases, 

554. 

France:  poule  de  Bresse,  69, 
220;  marketing  poultry,  74; 
cook  books,  147;  respect 
for  cooks,  155;  society 
women  in  the  kitchen,  156; 
kings  as  cooks,  159;  culin- 
ary supremacy,  210-238; 
lessons  in  economy,  '211; 
stock-pot,  212;  soups,  212; 
sauces,  215;  poultry,  220; 
use  of  vegetables,  243; 
restaurants,  244 ;  fruit, 
247;  culinary  word  lan- 
guage, 253 ;  Russian  and 
American  influences,  255 ; 
provincial  flavors,  262 ; 
central  market  place,  267 ; 
hsh,  275  ;  marketing,  277  ; 
market  gardens,  278;  mush- 
rooms and  truflfles,  280; 
fancy  fruits,  284;  bread, 
285;  bakers,  291;  best  but- 
ter how  made,  292;  cheese, 
303 ;  learned  from  Italy, 
309 ;  olive  oil,  311;  fond- 
ness for  pork,  417;  inten- 
sive gardening,  557. 

Freezene,    17. 

Frogs,  310. 

Fruits,  canned,  3 1 ;  raw,  117; 
in  France,  285 ;  England, 
432;  United  States,  496; 
Burbank's  improved,  517; 
cold  storage,  538;  pre-cool- 
ing,  539;  (see  apples, 
peaches,  etc). 

Frying,  132,  316. 


590 


INDEX 


Game,  in  Germany,  365 ; 
England,  421 ;  United 
States,  478. 

Garlic,  264,  336. 

Gastronomy:  Preface,  43,  61, 
64,  189-190,  231,  260,  394, 
502,  526. 

Geese,  344,  368. 

Genius  and  kitchen  problems, 
161. 

Germany:  cook  books,  146; 
traveling  cooking  schools, 
176;  peasants  and  veg- 
etables, 177;  use  of  French 
w^ords,  253 ;  butter,  301 ; 
cosmopolitan  cuisine,  339 ; 
delicatessen  stores,  341 ; 
sauerkraut,  343 ;  sausage 
and  smoked  ham,  345 ; 
live  fish  in  kitchen,  355 ; 
fish  ponds,  360;  game  and 
geese,  362 ;  Berlin  market, 
371;  bread,  373;  menus  on 
land  and  sea,  378,  382; 
cheeses,  385 ;  opposition  to 
frozen  meats,  403 ;  pork, 
416;  parcel  post,  553. 

Gladstone,   43,  437. 

Gluten,   320. 

Gluttony,   52,   188,  397»  576. 

Gooseberries,  436. 

Governmental  Gastronomy, 
502. 

Grapefruit,   433. 

Grapes,  497,  5 18. 

Gravy,   131. 

Greenhorns,  530. 

Griddle  cakes,  459. 

Grieg,  341. 

Grill,   130. 


Guinea  fowl  to  replace  game, 

477. 

H 

Hale,  J.  H.,  537- 

Ham,   smoked,  66,  97,   351. 

Hamburg,  .358. 

Harland,    Marian,    151,    157, 

167. 
Harvey,    Fred,    5. 
Hawaiian  Pineapples,   533. 
Hawthorne,   Hildegarde,   241. 
Hayward,  H.,  114,  116,  298. 
Herrick,    Christine    Terhune, 

151,   167. 
Hill,  J.  M.,  167. 
Holland,  cheese,  390. 
Honey,  14,  543. 
Hors  d'oeuvres,  256. 
Howells,  W.  D.,  328. 
Hungary,  374. 
Hunt,  C.  L.,  132,  137. 


I 


Indians  and  vegetables,  452, 
462. 

Italy:  cook  books,  147;  cradle 
of  modern  cookery,  309; 
olive  oil,  311;  sardines, 
314;  fried  foods,  316; 
macaroni,  319;  cheese  in 
place  of  meat,  328;  absti- 
nance,  329;  birds,  334;  gar- 
lic, 336;  tomatoes,  337. 


Jager,  G.,  566. 
Jams,  437. 

Japan,   304,   325,   579- 
Johnson,  Samuel,  396. 


INDEX 


591 


K 


Kant,  61,  572. 

Kellogg,  J.  L.,  89. 

Kitchen:  society  women  in, 
157,  169;  royalty  in,  158; 
private,  vs.  .community, 
197;  electricity  in,  200. 


Lakey,  Alice,  21,  105. 

Lane,  Mrs.  John,  433- 

Langworthy,  C.  F.,  132,  137. 

Lemons,   231,  541. 

Lettuce,   233. 

Lobsters,  480. 

London:  markets,  423;  res- 
taurants, 441  (see  Eng- 
land). 

Looking  down  on  others,  165, 
205. 

M 

Macaroni,  319. 
McCann,  A.  W.,  35,  38. 
Magazines,  helpful,    186. 
Malaria,   563. 
Mangoes,  507. 
Maple  syrup,  462. 
Marketing,     in     Paris,     266; 

Berlin,   371;   London,   279, 

423,  429. 
Mark    Twain,    3,    367,    452, 

466,  516. 
Marmalades,   437,   562. 
Marriage  and  food,   153. 
Mastication,  49. 
Mate,  580. 

Maxwell,  W.  H.,  171. 
Meat:  economical  use  of,  137; 


eating   in    the   future,    139; 

less   nutritious    than   cheese, 

330;  smoked   (see  smoked)  ; 

frozen,    76,   402    (see   beef, 

mutton,  &c). 
Melons,  494,  542. 
Men:  blameworthy,    13;  way 

to  heart  of,  153;  in  kitchen, 

159-163;    medical,    166;   as 

cooks,  173. 
Mexico,  5,  531. 
Middlemen,    553. 
Milk,  107,  548. 
Mitchell,  M.  J.,  151. 
Munich,  379. 
Murray,   126. 
Mushrooms,  280. 
Mutton,  82,  403. 


N 


Naples,  326. 
Napoleon,  51. 
Netter,  G.  G.,  34. 
Newnham-Davis,     Col.,     216, 

262,  265,  311,  448. 
New  Orleans,  239. 
Norway,  436. 

Nose,  seven  functions  of,  569. 
Nuremberg,  349. 
Nuts,  500,  508,  517. 


Odors,    gastronomic  value   of, 

63,   559-581. 
Oleomargarine,  no. 
Olive  oil,  228,  311,  315. 
Oranges,   541. 
Oregon,  8,  483,  54^. 
Osmosis,  81,  82,  91. 
Oven  taste,   131. 
Oysters,  86,  428,  487. 


592 


INDEX 


Paderewski,  I.  J.,  158,  164, 
259,  285,  435,  488. 

Palatability  (see  flavor). 

Pancake,  French,  246. 

Pancreas,  225. 

Paper-bag  cookery,   148. 

Parcel  Post,  553. 

Paris  restaurants,  244  (see 
France). 

Parloa,  Maria,   127. 

Pasteurized  cream,  for  butter, 
298. 

Pate  de  foie  gras,  370. 

Pawlow,  Prof.,  55,  225,  290, 
561. 

Pawpaw,  502. 

Peaches,  68,  530,  531,  536. 

Peanut  butter,  133. 

Pears,  527. 

Perfumery,  570. 

Persimmon,  500. 

Petite  marmite,  250. 

Pickles,  343. 

Philadelphia,  550. 

Physicians  and  cookery,   167. 

Pies,  466,  560. 

Piesse,  C.  H.,  564. 

Pigs:  wild  boar's  meat,  82; 
for  bacon,  411;  fair  play 
for,  418;  dairy  farming  and, 
415;  (see  pork,  ham,  ba- 
con). 

Pineapples,  532. 

Pleasures  of  the  table,  41-64. 

Plum  pudding,  443. 

Plums,  512,  517. 

Pork,  increasing  popularity  of, 

417. 
Portland,  Ore.,  10. 


Potatoes,  320,  495,   513. 
Poultry:   cold  storage,   69-74; 

future  of,   in  America,   72; 

marketing    in    France,    74; 

undrawn,    horrors    of,    76; 

why      do      we     eat?      79; 

French  varieties,   220;  tur- 
keys and  guinea  fowl,  473  ; 

feeding     flavor    into,     546, 

552. 
Powell,  E.  P.,  198,  497. 
Preservatives,  chemical,  28-39, 

40,  351. 
Psychology  of  eating;  61. 
Pure  food  experts,  school  girls 

as,  528. 
Pure  Food  laws,  31,  34,  342, 

352. 

Q 

Quince,    Burbank's    improved, 
516. 


R 


Raw  foods,  30. 

Restaurants:    in    Paris,    244; 

Munich,  379;  Berlin,  381; 

London,  447. 
Rhubarb,  Burbank's  515. 
Rice,  67. 
Roasting,   130. 
Rogers  and  Gray,  300. 
Romans,  ancient,  309,  551. 
Ronald,  Mary,  146,  167,  317, 

318. 
Rorer,  Mrs.,  167. 
Rossini,    163. 
Ruskin,  42. 
Russia,  55,  226-256,  283. 


INDEX 


593 


Sage,  Mrs.  Russell,  478. 

St.  Louis,  486. 

Sala,  G.  A.,  424. 

Salads:     digestive     value     of 

sour,     224;     dressing     for, 

224-232;    best    varieties    of, 

232-241 ;  fruit,  242. 
Salt,  142,  560  (see  taste). 
Sardines,  314. 
Sauces,  142,  215. 
Sauerkraut,  343. 
Sausages,  345. 
Scallops,  488. 
Schoolgirls    as    food    experts, 

528. 
Schools:  cooking  In,  171,  177, 

181;    teaching    the    art    of 

eating,   187. 
Scotch   marmalades,  437. 
Sewage  and  oysters,  87,  428. 
Sicilian  cooking,  310. 
Smell,  sense  of,  61,  63,  chapt. 

XIII. 
Smoked    meats    and    fish,    66, 

97,    245,    344,    350,    414, 

427. 
Snails,  276,  310. 
Soldiers  as  cooks,   173. 
Sole,  426. 
Soup,   123,  212. 
Sour  (see  taste). 
Spain,    147,   230,   336. 
Spices    (see  condiments). 
Steaming,   129. 
Stewing,  134. 
Stock-pot,  French,  211. 
Strassburg,   370. 
Strawberries,  435,  511. 
Sweet   (see  Taste). 


Switzerland,   374,  386. 
Syrup,  461. 


Table    d'hote,    philosophy    of, 

58. 

Tangelo,  508. 

Taste,    sense   of,    59-64,    559- 

566. 
Tastes,  quarreling  about,  574. 
Tea,  575. 
Terrapin,  549. 
Thackeray,  53,  265,  394. 
Thomspon,    Henry,    125,    136, 

152,  207,  323. 
Toast,  290. 
Tobacco,  568,  571. 
Tomatoes,  236,  337,  43 1,  492. 
Truffles,  280. 
Turkeys,  473,  552. 


U 


Urbain-Dubois,   147. 
V 

Variety,   118,  2o6,  535. 

Veal,  372. 

Vegetables:  raw;  117;  value 
of,  lies  in  flavor,  124;  how 
to  cook,  128;  combined 
with  meat,  134;  as  separate 
course,  243;  in  Paris  mar- 
ket, 268;  mostly  water,) 
279;  in  London,  430; 
United  States,  490;  gain- 
ing ground,  490;  weeds  as, 
505  ;  improvable,  523  ;  dan- 
gerous colors  in  canned, 
530. 


594 


INDEX 


Vegetarianism,    141. 
Venice,  324,  328. 
Venison,  365,  422. 
Vinegar,  32,  62,  224,  227. 

V/ 

Wallace,  R.,  410. 

Warner,  C.  D.,  5. 

Washington  State,  10,  483, 
546. 

Webster,  E.  H.,  106,  294, 
300. 

Weeds  as  vegetables,  505. 

Wiley  H.  W.:  on  badly 
cooked  food,  5 ;  "  honey," 
14;  poison  squad,  24;  con- 
diments and  chemical  pre- 
servatives, 28 ;  canned 
fruits,  31;  Referee  Board, 
36,  39;  cold  storage  de- 
creases palatability,  72 ; 
drawn  poultry,  80;  fresh 
poultry,  84;  oysters,  91; 
butter,  113;  soup  stock, 
123;  vegetables,  124;  meats 


as  condiments,  140;  veg- 
etarianism, 141;  oil,  229; 
mushrooms,  282;  fresh  fish, 
361 ;  syrup,  462 ;  mince 
meat,  571;  eating  w^ith  the 
eyes,  524;  colored  butter, 
525 ;  dangerous  coloring 
matter,  530;  canned  fruits, 
535;  flavor  in  pork,  549. 

Wilson,  Mrs.  Woodrow,  169. 

Wine,    bouquet   of,    576. 

Wives,  and  cooking,  153, 
182. 

Women:  are  they  to  blame? 
11;  as  writers  of  cook 
books,  167;  social  caste  of 
cooks,  154;  queens  and 
society  women  in  the 
kitchen,  158;  having  an  ap- 
petite, 179;  beauty  and 
olive  oil,  230;  commercial 
opportunities  for,  545  (see 
wives,  schools,  cooking, 
etc.). 

Wright,  H.  S.,  167. 


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